


Fragments

by shadowsong26



Series: Cartography [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Discussion of possession and its aftermath, F/M, Gen, Multi, One character makes a suicidal gesture at one point (think Will Turner in the first PotC movie), Referenced murder/torture/abuse, also please see the last chapter called 'spoilers and notes', as there are characters who are not tagged due to spoilers but play a major role in the fic, check there first to make sure the surprise won't be a nasty one, so if there are certain characters you really don't want to read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-28 06:50:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 38
Words: 51,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7629220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsong26/pseuds/shadowsong26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an attempt to talk Sam out of seeking Lucifer’s help with the Darkness, Dean tracks down the next best thing on Earth--Nick. As it turns out, he’s closer than they think, and the trace of Grace left in him when he was dispossessed may be vital to defeating the Darkness. Unfortunately, Sam and Dean are not the only ones chasing Archangel fragments, and at least one other person on the trail seems willing to kill Nick to get what they need...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1: God Has Healed, Chapter I

**Author's Note:**

> A near-canon AU, breaking off somewhere around 11x07/11x08ish (i.e., after Sam tells Dean where he believes his visions are directing him but before he actually goes to the Cage). Many thanks to a_timeforpeace and loveyoulikesin8 for their help and advice, and to liliaeth for the amazing artwork, and to my ever-patient roommates for putting up with my babbling.
> 
>  **Special Note on Dating:** As with most of my fic, I will be including the two skipped years (between S5/S6 and S7/S8) with regard to any timelining/date information. I have also relied on hells_half_acre’s timeline to calculate the length and timeline of referenced past events.

**_Part 1: God Has Healed_ **

 

 

**I.**

 

“Having second thoughts?” Jody asked Nick, passing him a glass of wine.

It had been an eventful month, more so than they had expected. Moving in together was a leap all on its own, even after being friends for three years, and dating for six months on top of that. They’d discussed the issue for several weeks, first alone and then with Alex, before Jody had officially asked Nick to move in with her, and he’d officially agreed.

The actual _move,_ by comparison, had been easy, and took less than an afternoon. It wasn’t like he had a lot of stuff, having spent the years since his dispossession on the move, focused on survival rather than putting down roots again.

_Until now._

He smiled up at her, and accepted the glass. “No.” He hesitated for a few seconds, then admitted, “I mean, things aren’t exactly what I expected, but it’s...good. I’m glad we did this.”

“Good,” she said, curling up next to him on the couch with her head on his shoulder.

Things _hadn’t_ gone as expected, in the end. Two days after Nick moved in, Jody had gotten a call from Sam. Twelve hours later, Claire had turned up on her doorstep. Things had gotten a lot more complicated after that. It was a big enough change, adding one person to her family unit, but adding _two?_ At least Alex had met Nick a few times before. Claire was a total stranger to all of them.

Still, it wasn’t like she could, in good conscience, refuse to take the kid in. Alex and Nick had both agreed on that when she’d checked with them; though she got the distinct impression that Nick was more than a little relieved that Sam and Dean weren’t planning on dropping her off in person.

 _We’ll work on that,_ she promised herself. Sooner or later, the three of them _would_ be in the same room, because they were all important to her. But it didn’t have to happen right now.

Adjusting to the new normal had been kind of a roller coaster all on its own. Claire and Alex fought like territorial cats, when they weren’t fighting almost like actual sisters. Nick and Claire had sort of circled each other warily for a couple days, before coming to some kind of understanding that Jody couldn’t quite fathom. She hadn’t felt right asking either of them about it.

It was all a lot to take in, for all of them, but it seemed like things were finally starting to balance out. Jody had recently gotten feeling that Nick, who had been almost completely solitary since he’d been dispossessed, was getting overwhelmed. And, if she were to be completely honest with herself, she sort of was, too.

She wouldn’t have believed this was her future when she first met Nick, years ago. Bobby had just died, she’d thought Sam and Dean were gone, too… She had been completely and utterly alone, in a way she longed to never experience again.

She’d joined a grief support group, and met Nick through it. They’d stumbled onto a monster--a pagan goddess who fed off her victims’ worst memories--and killed it together. After that, she hadn’t felt quite as alone anymore. Because, while their stories were wildly different in the details, she and Nick had a common foundation of sorrow, and had shared a triumph to meld them closer. As friends, at first, because he wasn’t ready to start dating again and she’d respected that.

And then Sam and Dean had come back from the dead, and she’d found Alex, and she and Nick had started dating after all. She’d gone from being almost completely isolated to having a live-in boyfriend, two teenagers to wrangle, and the boys just a phone call away, all in not quite four years.

Once they were more or less certain that Claire and Alex wouldn’t actually hurt each other or burn the house down, she and Nick had slipped off to the cabin, for a night alone.

“It’s...nice,” he said, after sitting in silence for a few minutes. “I know I’m a little...it’s just taking me a while to adjust.”

“I know.” She turned and kissed him lightly. “I think we’re doing pretty well, all things considered. And I like having you around all the time.”

He smiled at her. “Yeah. That part is nice.” He considered a minute. “And at least the girls haven’t killed each other yet.”

Jody laughed a little. “Small favors, yeah.” She sighed. “Think they’ll ever get along?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea; I never had siblings.”

“Well, we’ll hope for the best, and separate them when we have to.”

“Yeah.” He shifted a little, and was starting to say something else, when the temperature in the room suddenly plummeted.

_Shit, a ghost? Really? Here?_

In all the years since they’d met, she and Nick had only faced the one monster together. Or, at least, that had been the only one they’d tag-teamed in the field. She _had_ called on him a couple times to look things up for her, when she needed help and figured the issue was below Sam and Dean’s paygrade. But they’d never been attacked again. Not since that first time.

Not until now.

Jody shook off her surprise in an instant and dove for her bag. She had salt and iron; a kit she’d put together after reading Carver Edlund’s books, just in case she was surprised by something. Even though she was _sure_ her cabin wasn’t haunted.

But then she looked back over at Nick, and she knew in an instant that, obvious temperature warning sign aside, this was not a ghost.

Nick’s eyes had gone blank, he was barely breathing, and his neck--

His neck was _glowing._

“Nick?” she asked, backing away a few steps despite herself and clinging to her bag like a lifeline. Not that anything in it was likely to help. Ghosts didn’t _glow,_ at least not blue-white light like this. There was nothing in the _Supernatural_ books even _remotely_ like this.

Except that angels set off blue-white light. And there a mention--just that one single line in _Swan Song_ \--that Lucifer burned cold.

It couldn’t be that. It _couldn’t._ She wouldn’t allow it.

“Nick?” she repeated.

For an achingly long second, he didn’t answer. The other lights in the room burnt out all at once, with a sizzling _pop,_ leaving only that eerie glow from his throat, casting creepy shadows along the scars Lucifer had given him.

Jody shivered, and resisted the urge to wrap her arms around herself. Instead, she put the bag down and reached for her phone. She’d call Sam, Sam would know what the hell was going on, Sam might actually know what to _do._

And then the second ended.

The room warmed up again, as quickly as it had cooled, and Nick’s glow abruptly went out. He let out a faint gasp and crumpled.

“Nick!” She scrambled over to him, swearing as she tripped over an end table in the darkness. He was breathing again now, thank God; harsh and ragged and too fast, but he was breathing. And his eyes were back to normal. He had one hand pressed against his throat.

“What the hell happened?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” he croaked.

“Are you hurt?” she asked. “Here, let me see…” She still had her phone, even if she hadn’t had time to dial. At least it was useful as a flashlight.

With obvious reluctance, he pulled his hand away. There was a fresh burn, where the glow had been brightest, livid red against his skin.

She hissed in sympathy. “Shit. Let me get some ice…” Well, maybe not ice, given that it was a cold-burn, like frostbite, but she had a first aid kit somewhere. It would have something that could help him.

He caught her hand. God, he was so _cold._ “Don’t leave me, please?”

“Okay.” She sat back down and held his hand in both of hers, trying to warm it as best she could. She set the still-lit phone on the floor between them, so they would have some kind of light.

For a long minute, the two of them sat like that, with him visibly struggling to get his bearings.

At length, Nick broke the silence. “I think…” he said slowly. “I...I think something...something happened.”

She could tell that he meant outside this room. Something that he--or something buried inside him--had reacted to, in a way she had never seen before, in all the years she’d known him. “Yeah?”

Nick took a few minutes to answer; probably trying to sort through what he’d felt and put it into words. “It’s...old. Dark. Unnerving. I don’t...I don’t know wh-what it might mean.” He shivered and rested a hand on the new burn on his throat again.

“You probably shouldn’t poke that,” she said.

He jumped, then smiled ruefully and dropped his hand again. “Right. I know.”

“But this...dark thing, you don’t know what…?”

His smile slipped, and he shook his head. “No. It’s...not like anything I’ve seen before, or like you’ve told me about. Not...not demonic, not a g-god, not a Leviathan.”

“You ran into Leviathan?” She shivered a little. Maybe it was the fact that she’d been high as a kite on morphine at the time, or maybe it was because it had been someone she’d literally trusted with her life, but Dr. Gaines was quite possibly the single _creepiest_ monster she had ever faced. Not the worst--nothing could ever top the...the _thing_ that had worn Owen’s face--but certainly the creepiest.

He shook his head. “No, but...I heard things.” He drew his knees up to his chest, making himself smaller. “And the...the word makes me...it makes me feel certain things, that aren’t…” He swallowed, and shook his head. “I heard things, that’s all, and this...whatever this is, it’s not Leviathan again.”

“Okay,” she said. She started to ask about the ‘certain things,’ what that might mean, but she sort of had an idea what he was hinting at, and now was not the time. Especially if that cold spot really was--

 _Not thinking about that. Because it_ wasn’t.

“Is this...is it worse, or…?” she asked instead.

“I don’t know,” he said, after a long moment. “It’s not...it’s more dangerous, I think?” He closed his eyes. “I don’t...I don’t really want to think about it.”

“Okay,” she said again, and kissed his hand. He was finally starting to warm up some, thank God.

He leaned into her, resting his head on her shoulder. He was clearly exhausted. Which wasn’t...it wasn’t _good,_ but at least he was okay, for now. They could hash out whatever the hell had happened later. Right now, he was okay, he’d come out of--whatever the hell that was. They could deal with the rest as it came.

 _One step at a time,_ she reminded herself. _Just take it all one step at a time._

 


	2. Part 1, Chapter II

**II.**

 

Later, Jody tried reaching out to Sam because, misgivings and denials aside, chances were this was something he needed to know. Maybe even something he could help with. He might know something about what had set Nick off. If they knew what they were dealing with, everything would seem more manageable. She hoped.

But Sam didn’t reply to her text, or call her back, not for _ages,_ and that just made her more concerned. True, Sam’s silence _could_ have meant she was overreacting and nothing serious or world-ending was going on after all. On the other hand, it wasn’t like him to just go quiet like this, especially right after she called him because something Weird had happened.

Finally, late at night on the third day, her phone rang. Nick was asleep, and for once he wasn’t dreaming; probably just because he was still too damned drained for dreams. So, it wasn’t actually a good thing, but damned if she wouldn’t find a silver lining.

She checked her phone, hoping it was Sam, finally.

_Oh, thank God._

But then she hesitated. Nick was...well, every time she’d brought up Sam or Dean, he got tense. More scared than usual. Even now. _Especially_ now.

She didn’t have an immediate justification for betraying his confidence anymore. She had to come up with a quick lie about why she’d texted Sam five times, frantically begging him to call her. And _then,_ when Nick woke up, try bringing up the idea of a meeting with the Winchesters again. Because, crisis or not, sooner or later they _were_ going to run into each other, and it was better for them to set the time and place. Besides, she had a feeling that meeting up might be good for all of them, in the long run. Provided it happened with under controlled circumstances.

But that was a question for another day. First, she needed to explain herself to Sam without exposing Nick or being too specific.

And then it hit her. She _didn’t_ have to be specific, she didn’t have to be direct, she could get away with claiming she’d been worried about _them._ Because she had been, especially after it had been so freaking long for Sam to call her back. As long as she could figure out a way to explain her first call without mentioning Nick, it would all work out.

“Sam, hey,” she said, hoping she sounded as relieved as she felt.

“Jody? You okay? What--I’m sorry I didn’t text back sooner, I was...I was in the middle of…”

“Right,” she said. “Right, of course you were.”

“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Did something happen to the girls?”

She took a deep breath, squelched down her guilt about lying, and said, “No, nothing--sorry, nothing happened _here,_ I just...I heard about some weird things going down. Weirder than usual, you know?” _There was something, right around the time Nick started glowing that looked weird enough to--right, the storm._ “There was this freak storm over in Nebraska, and I thought it might be your kind of thing, and...well, and then you didn’t call me back. I was worried.”

“Oh,” Sam sounded relieved and almost...guilty? _Huh._ “Yeah, that was--uh, we were there. We’re both okay, though,” he added hastily. “Just...something...something evil got out.”

 _Something evil that might have been what made Nick react the way he did._ Despite herself, she shivered. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

He hesitated a second. “I don’t think so. Not right now. We still don’t--we don’t really know a whole lot about what...what this thing is, what it wants, not yet.”

“Okay,” she said. “Anything I should keep an eye out for?”

“Hang on, let me get Dean. We can both fill you in.”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

She waited a few seconds, fidgeting a little with her necklace while listening to the background noise on the other end of the call, then Dean said, “Hey, Jody. Everything okay?” He sounded tense, but not, like, ‘in-pain’ tense, just...tense.

“Yeah, it is now I know everyone’s safe,” she said. Which, thank God, was the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “Sam said there’s some stuff I should watch for?”

“Yeah.” The two of them filled her in--it didn’t take long, even with them being not super organized about it, constantly cutting each other off to add a detail or two.

It wasn’t pretty: zombies--and even if they weren’t like the ones in _her_ nightmares, they were still freaking _zombies._

“What do I do if I see one?” she asked.

“Call us,” Sam said immediately. “And do _not_ let it bleed on you.”

“Far as we can tell, these things were isolated in that one town,” Dean said. “I tracked the thing that caused it to another one. Nothing turned up there like what Sam dealt with, but this...a girl got her soul eaten.”

“Her _soul?_ ”

“Yeah,” he said. “But, uh, soullessness can be...unpredictable.”

“Call us if someone...like, goes on a killing spree, or has another, like, complete personality reversal,” Sam added. “It might not be...what we’re after, but it’s a start.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Anything else I can do for you boys?”

They were quiet for a few seconds, then Sam said, “Just stay safe, okay? And keep in touch.”

“I will,” she promised. “And you boys know where to find me.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Talk to you soon.”

She stopped herself from saying _be careful out there,_ because they sure as hell wouldn’t listen. “Talk to you soon,” she echoed instead.

 


	3. Part 1, Chapter III

**III.**

 

Two weeks.

It had been two weeks since Sam had updated Dean about the visions, about where he thought they were coming from--and where he thought they were telling him to go.

Dean had spent most of that time in a barely-concealed, carefully-controlled panic. The _last_ thing they needed was to add freaking Lucifer into the mess they were dealing with. And he knew Sam knew that--or at least Dean _hoped_ he did--but Sam was so mixed up and thrown by those fucking visions that he wasn’t thinking straight.

So Dean had decided to think straight _for_ him. He’d spent the time digging through everything he could find, trying to come up with any alternatives to Sam’s crazy plan. He’d even asked Cas about Gabriel, because Gabriel might have been a murderous dick, but he was the _much_ lesser of two evils here. Unfortunately, Cas was still convinced Gabriel was dead--that Metatron had just been fucking with him--so that put him back at square one.

But now, _finally,_ he was pretty sure he had managed to find a viable option. And, for the umpteenth time, he’d picked the fight with Sam so he could talk him into a slightly less insane solution.

“Look, we keep having the same freaking argument over and over again. So, unless you actually have an alternative, we should start making _actual plans._ ” Sam’s hands were shaking a little, but his face was set.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Dean said. “I _have_ an alternative this time.”

Disbelief and relief warred on Sam’s face for a second. “...okay, I’m listening.” He let out a long, slow breath, gripping the table tight in a pretty clear attempt to still his hands.

Dean couldn’t help but feel relieved that he’d finally caved. Even if Sam was still freaked and still insisted on this goddamned batshit plan of his, at least he had a freaking opening.

Now he just had to sell Sam on _his_ plan. “Look, we _can’t_ open the Cage. Not all the way. That’s suicide at best, screwing the rest of the world along with us at worst.”

“Dean--”

“But what if we could just...open it a crack? Like, a window, instead of the whole door.” Not that he liked that option much better, because even _talking_ to Lucifer felt like a terrible idea. But it sure as hell beat Sam’s plan.

His brother frowned, chewing over that idea. “I’m pretty sure it’s an all-or-nothing kind of thing, Dean. I mean, I think Yellow Eyes managed it, but that involved killing a half-dozen nuns.”

“No one’s talking about hacking up a convent,” Dean assured him. “But...I was thinking, about when...back during the Apocalypse, that summer when we weren’t talking to each other--”

“I remember,” Sam said flatly.

“Well, did I tell you about how me and Cas went to shake down Raphael?”

He nodded. “What does that have to do with--”

“I think we should try to find Nick,” Dean interrupted.

Sam stared at him for a moment. “Nick’s dead.”

“He’s not.”

“There’s no way he survived--”

“He did.” Dean sighed. “He was...he was still breathing, last I saw him. I called 911. Or...or I think I did, maybe Bobby…? I don’t know, I don’t remember a lot of detail after...anyway, he was still breathing. That much, I’m sure of.”

Sam was quiet for a minute. “You never mentioned this before.”

Dean shrugged. “It never really seemed important until now?” Which was the truth. When Sam was soulless, he wouldn’t have cared. When he got his soul back, he’d never asked, and Dean hadn’t wanted to risk damaging the wall by bringing it up. Then there were the hallucinations, then he went to Purgatory and Sam hit that freaking dog and they’d been fighting about that, then they’d had to focus on the Trials, then Gadreel, then the Mark…

There had never been a good time. And it had never mattered enough to settle for a bad one. Until it did.

Another long silence, then Sam took a deep breath. “Even if he--even if you’re right, even if he was alive then…”

It was a fair point, and the reason it had taken Dean so long to bring it up. “I did some digging,” he said. “And an ambulance showed up and took him away, about five minutes after me and Bobby and Cas cleared out. I found the hospital he was taken to, and used some of the stuff Charlie and Frank showed me and--look, I didn’t want to bring it up until I knew it was still an option,” _since if I didn’t have some goddamn good evidence this was real, it would’ve just made you even_ more _set on this stupid Cage plan of yours._ “But last night, I found this.” He called up the security footage, and played it back for Sam.

The tape showed Nick, all bandages and scars, blank-eyed and compliant, being wheeled out of the hospital by a woman in a nurse’s uniform. With the ease of much repetition, Dean paused the video at the exact moment where the nurse’s eyes flashed black.

Sam stared at the screen for a long minute. “We don’t know what she did with him.”

“No,” Dean admitted. “But it’s a start, right? I mean, I’d figure there’s a damn good chance she kept him alive, at least for a while. After all the trouble she went through to extract him.” _Whatever else she might have wanted, there’s all the crap we--all the crap you learned about angels and possession because of Gadreel, about traces getting left behind, about memories getting recorded or whatever…she might have been looking for answers, or orders, or even a way to bring Lucifer back._

“But all these years? I mean, we can’t even be sure that demon’s still alive. Meg said Crowley wiped out all the loyalists, remember?”

And chances were, one of Crowley’s demons would’ve iced the poor bastard pretty quick, just to make sure he _couldn’t_ be used to bring the Devil back. “I know.” Dean sighed. “But...come on, can we please at least _try_ reaching out to him before you do anything too stupid?”

“Reach out to him and...what?”

“See if he can help.”

“No,” Sam said flatly. “Dean, what the hell happened to focusing on _saving_ people again? Last I checked, Nick was a person. He counts.”

“No, I know. I’m not talking about putting him in any real danger, except...just--I mean, for all we know, he’s still catatonic, the way Raphael’s vessel was.” As soon as he said it, Dean knew that that was the exact wrong point to make, but it was too damn late to take it back.

“That makes it worse!” He took a deep breath, and Dean could practically see him counting to ten inside his head. “Look, even if I was okay with--there’s _no way in hell_ I’m forcing this on him without his okay, and if he’s catatonic, he can’t agree. And even if...even if he’s not, I _can’t_ ask him to do this, Dean. Even if he is alive, even if he is lucid, I--this is _our_ mess. _We_ have to handle it. Even if it means _me_ talking to...we can’t put Nick through this. We don’t get to go to the bench. Not on this one.”

“Okay, fine.” Dean took a deep breath, and shifted his argument. “Say he’s not catatonic. Maybe he knows something. Maybe he’s having visions, too.” Which would mean Sam’s visions might _not_ be coming from God, which…

Not a fun thing to contemplate.

From the look on his face, Sam had come to the same conclusion, and shook his head. “Unless he prayed for help like I did…”

Dean could tell he was finally getting through to his brother, though, so he pressed his advantage. “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he remembers something. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he can help, maybe he can’t. The point is, we don’t _know,_ and there’s a pretty damn good chance there’s _something_ to this, at least from where I’m standing. And...look, if Nick doesn’t pan out, we’ll--we’ll figure out how to make your idea work. But can we at least _try_ something else first? I don’t want to put you down there until we’ve run through every other possible option.”

“But you’re willing to put him down there instead of me?” he asked quietly.

He flinched a little. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Isn’t it?” Sam said. “Why else would you be so dead set on tracking him down? Dean--if it’s too dangerous for me, it’s too dangerous for him. We _can’t_ keep prioritizing each other over everyone else. That’s what keeps getting us into messes like this.”

“I know.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just want to sound him out, okay? Find out what he knows, what he’s willing to do...anything. Maybe, _just maybe,_ he’ll know enough so _no one_ has to go...has to do what you’re thinking. _That’s_ what I meant. So can we at least _try?_ Please?”

For a long moment, Sam didn’t say anything, then he sighed. “Fine. We’ll try and track him down.”

 


	4. Part 1, Chapter IV

**IV.**

 

Jody found Nick right where she’d expected to--tucked away in a corner of the living room, practically sitting on a space heater.

“Hey,” she said, going over to him and bending down to kiss him softly.

He jumped, but kissed back. “Hey.”

“How are you holding up?”

He shrugged one shoulder, turning back to his laptop and whatever he was working on. Ever since he’d gone on the run, he’d done freelance editing, for school papers, professional articles, anything anyone was willing to send him by email. It meant he didn’t have to deal with people any more than absolutely necessary, it let him stay more or less off the grid, and it kept him fed.

And he was still ignoring the question, if not quite ignoring _her,_ and avoiding the conversation they both knew they needed to have. He’d been dodging it for weeks.

No more, though. She sat down across from him, and gently shut his laptop. “Nick…”

He didn’t flinch, but he looked--he looked so lost, and so tired, and so scared. “I’m...Jody, please, can we not?”

“I don’t think we can, anymore,” she said. “I mean...did you sleep at _all_ last night?”

“Some. A little. ...not really, but that’s not the point,” he said. “I’m just…” He struggled visibly for the words, then shook his head. “This is a rough patch. I’ll get through it. It’s not...I always have nightmares, you know that.”

“Not like this.”

He flinched and buried his hands under his blanket. “This is just a rough patch,” he tried insisting, but it sounded halfhearted. “It’s not...I’ll get through it.”

Jody knew that wasn’t exactly a lie. He _had_ had rough patches before. And she did know that things things had gotten _really_ bad for him before. Still, he’d been mostly okay, or at least on a relatively even keel, since they’d started dating, so maybe he was due for one. Grim thought.

On the other hand, though...yes, she’d seen him go through strings of bad days, but nothing like this. And this had been going on for _weeks,_ ever since his neck had done that glowy thing. And, between what little he’d been able and willing to tell her then and what she’d gotten from Sam and Dean after, she had a feeling she knew where all of this was headed, and she _knew_ he wasn’t going to like it.

The fact of the matter was, no matter what he tried to tell himself, this wasn’t just a regular string of bad days. She was sure of it. And she was pretty sure he knew it, too, even if he couldn’t admit it to himself yet. “I know you will,” she said. “But, Nick...something’s going on, something big. And I’m betting that it has to do with whatever it was you felt last summer.”

He flinched again, but didn’t try denying it.

“And I know you don’t want to think about it, but I’m pretty sure that this isn’t something we can…” She shook her head, then took a deep breath and just dropped the bombshell. “I think you need to talk to Sam.”

He went white, and he shrank back into himself. “No. No, I-I can’t...he’ll...th-they’ll…”

“Maybe he’ll know something. Or maybe he’s having nightmares, too, maybe--”

“Can we just--I _can’t,_ Jody, please?”

“You can’t keep going on like this, either,” she pointed out. _And I can’t watch you go through this much longer and not do anything. Please,_ please, _let me help you. Let me do something. Anything._ “Tell me, do you have a better idea?”

He shivered and looked away, but he didn’t answer.

“If this does have something to do with--”

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t...don’t say it, please.”

“Okay,” she said.

For a long moment, he was silent, toying with his blanket. “Maybe...m-maybe you’re right, maybe it’s...related. To S-Sam and...and me. B-but...I _can’t,_ Jody. They’ll kill me.”

“They won’t.”

“I’m...I-I’m the face of Sam’s worst nightmare,” he said. “I’m the reason things go wrong. Why wouldn’t they?”

For a minute, she wavered between trying to help him unpack that ‘I’m the reason things go wrong’ thought, and just sticking to the original argument. Every so often, he’d come out with a weird, toxic thought that was clearly some kind of legacy from his possession. This definitely sounded like one of them. Sometimes, those thoughts blindsided her, but she always tried to help him course-correct when she could. The worst part was, he usually _knew_ those weren’t his native thoughts, but he couldn’t rewrite them himself.

Not for the first time, she really wished there was someone--anyone--in the hunting world who knew how to help Nick, and people like him.

She sighed, and decided to leave it for now. Someday, they’d work on that, but at the moment, convincing him to meet with Sam was her priority. “They trust me,” she said. “I’ll ask them. If I vouch for you, they won’t hurt you. I promise.”

He shook his head, looking even more distressed at that thought. “No. No, I...I don’t want you to get in the middle of this. I know how important being friends with them is to you, and I...I don’t want to mess that up for you.”

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. It was a sweet thought, however misguided it was. And even if it was a little patronizing, it was a major step up from blind panic. She would take patronizing over panic any day. “We have to do something, though. Right? You’re with me up to that point?”

He was quiet for a minute, then took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah.”

Progress, at least. Baby steps.

She started to say something else, then her phone buzzed at her. “Crap. I have to get back. But you’ll…?”

“I’ll...I’ll think about it,” he promised. “What the next step should be.”

“And what I suggested?”

He shivered. “I’ll think about it,” he repeated.

“Okay.” She leaned forward and kissed him again. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

 


	5. Part 1, Chapter V

**V.**

 

Once Sam and Dean made the decision to see if Nick might be a way to avoid contacting Lucifer directly, they didn’t waste any time before running down every lead they could find.

The security tape Dean had dug up was on file because a doctor had been murdered when the demon kidnapped Nick from the hospital. The nurse it had possessed had, of course, been convicted, and died in prison a couple years back. No lead there--though, granted, even if she _had_ been alive, and somehow, miraculously, willing to talk to them, they probably wouldn’t have gotten much out of her. She’d been found an hour later, covered in blood, less than two blocks from the hospital, and there had been no sign of Nick anywhere nearby.

The cop who worked the case was easier to find, but he wasn’t all that helpful, either. He’d figured that the ‘psycho nurse’ who did it had just used Nick as cover to get clear of the hospital, then, as soon as she didn’t need him anymore, straight-up killed the poor bastard and left his body in a shallow grave somewhere. “He’ll turn up,” he told Sam over the phone. “One of these days. ‘Course, we couldn’t even identify him when he was _alive,_ so it won’t do much good.”

At that point, the trail had gone cold. And the fastest and easiest way to get intelligence was to go right to the source. They had no way of knowing exactly which demon had done the deed, so they went down to a crossroad to summon one at random, and start fishing.

They weren’t kept waiting long.

The demon who answered their summons was possessing a dark-haired girl in her mid-twenties. The meatsuit was no one either of them recognized; but as soon as she caught sight of who had summoned her, something unreadable gleamed in her eyes for a half-second before she covered it, flashing red instead.

“The Winchesters,” she said coolly, eyeing the trap on the pavement with remarkable lack of surprise. She had a faint British accent, and something about the way she said their name was vaguely familiar, though Sam couldn’t quite place it. “My own damn fault, I suppose. What do you want?”

“Just to talk,” Sam said.

“I see.” She rolled her eyes, and they returned to their natural green. “Well, I know how your ‘talks’ with my kind tend to go.”

“Look, bitch--” Dean started.

“Call me Lucy,” the demon interrupted. “There’s no reason to dispense with civility, now is there.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

Sam sighed, and decided not to get involved. It didn’t really matter what they called her. He doubted Lucy was her real name, or even the name she was most commonly known by in Hell.

“Well, gentlemen,” Lucy said, after waiting for one of them to continue. “What do you want from me?”

“We need to find someone,” Sam said, trying not to think too hard about the face he’d seen on the tape, or freak out too much about what sort of state Nick might be in now. He couldn’t even bring himself to say the man’s _name. Fuck._ Probing those wounds was the _last_ thing they needed right now, especially since, if this didn’t pan out…

 _Focus._ He braced himself as best he could and went on. “We know he was being held prisoner, or something, by a demon a few years back. That’s the last trace we have.”

“A hostage?” She frowned. “Even if your information is accurate, I’m sure you know that the chances he’s alive now are...well.”

“We know that,” Dean said.

Lucy considered him for a moment, then sighed, and shrugged. “Very well. I don’t really have any other plans at the moment, so I’ll see what I can do.” She kicked at one of the lines of the trap idly. “Who are you looking for, exactly?”

“Nick,” Dean said. “Lucifer’s vessel.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh. Oh, I see. There hasn’t been any chatter about _him_ since....” Her eyes flicked over to Sam, who shivered.

“Watch it,” Dean warned.

But Sam shook his head slightly, then took a deep breath and turned to Lucy. “We know he survived his possession,” he said. “We know he...he was taken to a hospital in Detroit, after, and we know a demon took him out of it. That’s as far as the trail goes. That’s why we need your help.”

“And what, exactly, do you expect from me?” Lucy asked. “The name of the demon who did it?” She shook her head. “I do, in fact, know who it was--but it won’t do you any good. That demon’s dead.”

But she knew _something._ That much, they could be sure of now. Which might mean Dean was right, and this was...well, Sam still didn’t know what it _was,_ but it was a semi-viable lead they could track down. Which was more than they’d had yesterday.

“Well, can you at least tell us where it took him?” Dean asked.

She considered them for a moment. “What’s in it for me?”

“How about we don’t kill you?” he snapped.

She laughed. “Oh, please. My host has never taken a fatal wound, and according to rumor, you actually give a damn about our meatsuits these days. You’re not going to kill me. Not unless I give you no choice, and I rather like existence.”

Sam winced a little, but--well, she wasn’t wrong. Or, at least, that was the goal. Even if they had to figure out some other way to keep her from running to Crowley with the news of what they were up to.

Fuck. That was a potential problem he, at least, had totally forgotten about. They had no freaking clue how Crowley was going to read this, especially since he’d tried to ally with Amara before. But they might have to bring him in anyway, especially if Nick didn’t pan out. If anyone knew how to get to the Cage, it would be the King of Hell.

 _Focus,_ he reminded himself. _One step at a time. We haven’t ruled Nick out yet, and we’ll find a way to make sure Crowley stays out of the loop until we do._

The demon sighed. “Look. I _could_ tell you where Nick was taken after the hospital, but that trail’s near half a decade cold. He escaped around the time the Leviathan showed up. And no demon involved in holding him at the time is still alive. I’m not sure how much good it’ll do you. However, for the right price, I can give you something better.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dean asked.

She smirked. “I can get you Nick’s phone number.”

Sam stared at her. “You’re serious.” Well, that answered questions of whether or not Nick was lucid, if he had an actual direct contact number. He wasn’t sure if that made this whole thing better or worse.

She grinned at them and blinked, her eyes flaring red again. “Crossroads demon, remember? For the right price, I can get you _anything._ ”

“Yeah, well, you ain’t getting your hands on either of our souls,” Dean said.

She laughed again and waved a hand dismissively. “Please. Like I’d buy a _Winchester_ soul. I don’t actually have a death wish, thanks.”

“Then what _do_ you want?” Sam asked.

Her face turned serious, and her eyes went back to normal. “I’ll be frank with you. I made a...potentially unwise deal, a couple months back. It was worth it--absolutely worth it--”

“Whose soul?” Dean interrupted.

She rolled her eyes. “Not all bargains involve souls, Dean. Have you really not gotten that memo yet?” She shook her head again. “In any case, this deal was for an artifact of great power, in exchange for a resurrection. Nothing too unusual. Except, unfortunately, in that the man I brought back for my client...well, certain parties would be highly displeased to learn what I did.”

“Get to the freaking point, Lucy,” Dean said. “We don’t have all day.”

“Rude,” she muttered, then sighed. “The point is, I _might_ be able to handle myself, if said parties put two and two together and learn of my involvement. I _might_ manage to stay off their radar completely. And my client _might_ not sell me out if there’s similar trouble on their end. But I’m not foolish enough to depend on any of that. And I know how much weight the Winchester name carries, in certain circles. So I want to know--I want your _guarantee_ \--that if, in extremis, I call on you for aid…” She met Dean’s eyes square on. “I want to know that once, just this once, you’ll take the call.”

For a beat, none of them said anything. “One-time protection?” Sam asked slowly.

“Precisely. If you agree to do that, I will provide you the means to get in touch with Nick.”

Sam exchanged a glance with Dean, who didn’t look happy. He wasn’t either, but…

“Oh, come on, boys,” she said, spreading her hands with a smile. “You’ve done far worse things for other demons. Azazel’s daughter? The King himself?”

She had a point.

Sam raised an eyebrow, eyes still on Dean, and his brother finally sighed and shrugged. He could read the answer in Dean’s eyes clear enough: _this fucking sucks, but it’s the much, much,_ much _lesser of two evils._

And Dean was right. Even without talking to Nick yet, Sam could admit that now, at least in the privacy of his own head.

Sam nodded once, then took a deep breath turned back to Lucy. “Deal.”

 


	6. Part 1, Chapter VI

**VI.**

 

Nick was back.

Practically as soon as Jody had talked him out of his corner, he’d gone on some mysterious mission. He hadn’t given her much detail on where he was going; all he would say was that he knew where to find something that would keep him--and her, and the girls--safe. Exactly what that thing was, on the other hand, he kept to himself. He _had_ at least told her where he was headed--the town, anyway--and that he shouldn’t be more than two or three days. And he _had_ checked in every day, which had helped. Some.

Still, it had been hard, having him off on his own, when she _knew_ he was quietly falling apart inside, and she had no way of getting to him quickly--of _helping_ him--if something went wrong. It hadn’t exactly made her happy.

On the one hand, it meant he’d started to _do_ something about the mess he’d been dragged into. Whatever it was. On the other hand, given where his head had been lately, she’d been _scared._ And she had _not_ liked waiting on the sidelines like this.

Now that he was _back,_ though, she could relax a little. She hugged him close first, then asked, “You wanna finally tell me what that was all about?”

To his credit, Nick could obviously tell she was not exactly happy with him. The first thing out of his mouth was, “I’m sorry.”

She nodded, accepting the apology. “So?”

“Um.” He hesitated. “I went to...there are these caches. Uh. Crypts. I didn’t...I didn’t tell you the details before because I was...I was going on...memories.”

The implications hit her like a brick to the face. “Crypts?”

He nodded, avoiding looking at her. “Yeah. There’s...there’s one pretty close by, and it had…” His hands clenched convulsively around his bag.

“You could have told me. I would have gone with you. I would have…” Okay, he probably wouldn’t have let her go with him, and if it had taken him three days to get there and back it might have caused problems for her at work. Plus, she didn’t want to leave the girls alone that long. But if she’d known what he was planning, she would have at least _tried_ to make sure he didn’t get--well, there was no way he could avoid getting hurt, at least psychologically, visiting crypts belonging to the thing that had _possessed_ him. But she could at least have minimized the damage. She could at least have been there to help him through it.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I know. I know, I could have--I _should_ have told you. I just…I didn’t...I don’t...I don’t want you to see…” He took a deep breath. “It’s hard for me to...telling you about that...that p-part of me is…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I just...I _couldn’t._ Especially if...my...my memories aren’t exactly reliable. If it was all for nothing, I just...I didn’t want anyone but me to expect things I maybe couldn’t deliver.” He paused for a second, then added, “And I didn’t want...I didn’t want you to worry more than you had to.”

Jody sighed, and sat down on the couch. “I get it, Nick. Or I think I do, anyway. I’m not--I respect that there are things you don’t want to talk about with me.” She knew damn well that she avoided certain topics with him, too. And, okay, that part about managing expectations--about not wanting to get her hopes up--made a certain amount of sense. “But if you’re doing something this...something that could seriously hurt you, physically or emotionally, like this, please let me know, okay? Tell me more than you did this time. I know that I wouldn’t have been able to do much more than worry anyway, but I promise you, not knowing is worse. So just...just _talk_ to me, okay?”

“Okay,” he promised.

“Okay, good.” There was a moment of silence between them, then she asked, “What were you getting, anyway?”

“Um. Holy oil. It’s--did the books…?”

“Yeah, it’s in the books.” Okay. Warding against angels; could be used as a weapon against them, too. Based on what she’d read--to say nothing of Nick’s experiences, and Claire’s--holy oil was probably not at all a bad thing to have on hand.

“And also…” He reached into his bag and pulled out a wooden box, which he passed over to her.

She studied it for a second--it didn’t seem all that special--then unlatched it.

Inside, she found antique gun, with seven bullets in a neat row below it. There were symbols carved into the pommel--symbols that looked vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t recall exactly where she’d seen them before.

And then it hit her. An antique gun, carved with arcane symbols.

She looked up at him. “Is...is this…?”

He nodded.

This was the Colt. She was holding the freaking _Colt._

“Holy _shit._ ”

It did make sense, sort of, that he would have it. It had appeared one last time in the books before completely disappearing from the narrative; Crowley had given it back to the boys, and Dean had shot Lucifer in the face with it.

Had shot _Nick_ in the face with it.

She shut and latched the box. “You okay?” Getting shot wasn’t exactly a fun experience. And if that was one of the few things he remembered with any clarity, picking up the gun and bringing it to her must have been hell.

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing at his temples. “I don’t...I mean, that isn’t really one of the things I remember, but there’s bits and pieces. Mostly I just get a headache when I look at it. It’s worse when I touch it, but I’m fine. Really. I promise.”

Crap. No wonder he thought Sam and Dean would kill him if they saw him. “Why give it to me?”

“Because I figured that was safest,” he said. “No one would...no one would look for it with you, right? Someone else might know where to find a crypt, if they decide to go looking. Besides, you have Claire and Alex to protect.”

Jody nodded. “Right. I’ll...uh, I’ll put it somewhere safe.” She set the box on the table and went over to hug him again.

He held her close, steadier than she expected but still tense.

“I’ve got you to protect, too,” she murmured into his ear. “Don’t forget that.”

He nodded, and let out a slow breath. “I won’t.”

After a minute, she let go and picked up the Colt to lock it in her gun safe. She wasn’t completely sure that she was the right person to hold it, but Nick trusted her with it. And he was probably right, no one would look for it with her.

And she _did_ have people to protect.

_I just hope I never need to use it._

 


	7. Part 1, Chapter VII

**VII.**

 

Lucy had come through, providing them with a ten-digit number on a torn piece of notebook paper. She’d then reminded them of their promise to protect her before vanishing. They’d headed back home to the bunker to make the call--less chance someone could eavesdrop, or at least that’s what Sam had said.

But now that they were back, and Sam had been staring at the paper for a good five minutes, Dean was pretty sure he’d just been stalling. “You want me to do it?” he asked.

Sam jerked a little, and finally looked up from the paper. “What? No. No, I should--it should be me.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” Dean sat down on the other side of the table, drumming his fingers on it.

Sam took a deep breath, then pulled out his phone and carefully dialed. He hesitated, then put it on speaker and set it in the middle of the table. “Don’t say anything unless I ask, okay?” he said, while it was still ringing. “But you should probably...probably hear.”

Dean nodded.

The phone rang several times, before switching over to a mechanical voice. “You have been directed to an automatic voice message system. The person you are trying to reach is not available. Please leave your message after the tone. When you have finished your message, you may hang up or press one for more options.”

 _Great,_ Dean thought. _Another excuse for Sam to stall, or try and back out._

But, after the beep, Sam took another deep breath, then said, “Um, hi. This is...this is Sam Winchester.I know I’m probably the last person in the world you want to hear from, ever. And I wouldn’t...I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t important. Believe me, I wouldn’t. But...but we need to talk. It’s about...it’s about the Darkness. Please give me a call back when you get this. You can reach me at 785-555-1093.” He reached over and hung up.

For a minute or so, the two of them stared down at Sam’s phone.

“He’s probably not going to call back right away,” Sam finally said, breaking the silence.

It took Dean’s brain another half-second to drag his own attention away from the phone and process what Sam had said. “Uh. No, probably not.”

“And he might not call back at all.”

 _Crap._ Dean could see where Sam’s mind was going from there. And avoiding that was the whole point of dragging Nick out of whatever hole he’d crawled into. “Let’s just--can we give him a few days before we give up on this, at least?”

“I’m not giving up,” Sam promised. “Not yet, anyway. But...Dean, the longer we wait, the stronger Amara gets. Sooner or later, she’ll reach a point where we won’t be able to handle her. We barely got away _last_ time, remember? And she’s probably only gotten stronger since then, so, the faster we move…”

“I know,” he said, trying his best to ignore the itchy feeling at the back of his brain that kept coming up every time they seriously discussed killing her. And the slightly uncomfortable not-quite-guilty feeling for not telling Sam exactly _how_ they’d gotten away. Until he figured out what the hell Amara’s game with him was, though, he figured it was best to keep it to himself. Especially with Sam already inches from going off the rails _without_ knowing about the creepy bond or whatever it was. “Believe me, I know.”

Sam sighed, and stared at his phone for a minute before pushing himself up and wandering over to the shelves and grabbing a book, seemingly at random. “But you’re right. He might not see the message for a while. And once he does...even if he doesn’t run for the hills, he might not...I’ll give him three days.”

“Okay,” Dean said, wishing he could push for more, but not wanting to try it. Not yet. Pushing Sam too hard right now might make him fall off the fence in the wrong direction. Maybe when they hit that self-imposed deadline--

The phone, still on the table, buzzed, and they both turned to stare at it for a second.

Sam scrambled to check it. “Text,” he said, which Dean hadn’t really needed to hear. It wasn’t like the phone had done more than sort of chirp, after all.

“Yeah?”

“He...he gave us an address. Wants to meet. Uh. Day after tomorrow.”

Dean blinked. “In person?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He took a shaky breath. “I mean...it makes sense. It’s harder to pretend to be someone you’re not in person.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, but he couldn’t help but remember Gadreel. It was harder, yeah, but not impossible. “You up for this?”

It took Sam a minute to answer. “I think so,” he said. “I mean, if I’d...I was just so sure he was dead, but I should have...I should’ve looked for him sooner, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s my fault, isn’t it? Everything that happened to him.” He shrugged one shoulder, uncomfortably. “I owe him a meeting, at least. And you weren’t wrong. Maybe he can help.”

“Here’s hoping,” Dean said, a little uneasily. Because, yeah, the whole mess was sort of Sam’s fault, from a certain point of view. But _he’d_ broken the first Seal, so it was sort of his fault, too. And, more importantly, Nick had to _consent._ They had no way of knowing what kind of game Lucifer had run on the poor bastard, but…

So, yeah, it was _kind of_ Sam’s fault, but not really. He just wasn’t sure exactly how to get that across to his brother, not when Sam was all wound up like this already.

Sam shook his head. “Anyway, uh, this address is just outside Sioux Falls. Maybe we can swing by and see Jody and the girls after, say hi?”

Dean pounced on the change of subject with relief. “Yeah, that’d be good. It’s been way too long since we saw them. Hopefully this time there won’t be freaking vampires involved.”

Some of the tension eased out of Sam at that. He even smiled a little. “Yeah, no kidding.”

Dean relaxed a little more in his turn. _This could work. This could actually work._ All they had to do now was get to the meeting, get whatever intel Nick had, and get out. Still not in the bag, but things were looking a hell of a lot better than they had been even an hour ago.

Dean decided that was good enough for now. He’d take his hope where he could get it.

 


	8. Part 1, Chapter VIII

**VIII.**

 

Somewhat to Jody’s surprise, Nick had been a lot steadier since visiting the crypt. For all he’d been calmer than usual right when he got back, she’d been prepared for things to get worse, after he poked at those old wounds. Especially since they were well into fall, and it wouldn’t be long before it got _really_ cold and started snowing. She knew that made him edgy. True, he was still having nightmares and not sleeping all that well, but he was much less twitchy during the day. Baby steps.

Maybe it was just what he’d gone and gotten from the crypt--holy oil, the freaking _Colt_ ; finding protection in something that terrified him. As far as she knew, he hadn’t actually done anything with the holy oil yet, and she had the Colt locked with her other weapons in her gun safe, but it would make sense that just having that option would make him feel secure.

Things were steady enough, in fact, that coming home for lunch was once again less about making sure Nick was holding together and more about snatching a few minutes alone with her boyfriend; despite the vague sense of impending doom that had been hanging over them ever since Nick’s throat started glowing. She treasured these afternoons with him--they couldn’t always depend on the girls being out in the evenings, so the days when she could sneak away for lunch were pretty much the only time they had to themselves.

Nick wasn’t immediately visible when she walked in the front door, but she could hear him moving around in the kitchen; good. “Honey, I’m home.”

“I’ll be out in just a second,” he called back.

“All right.” He’d left his phone on the table; when she dumped her keys next to it, it lit up; someone had just left him a voicemail. “Honey, were you expecting a call?”

He poked his head out. “Uh, no?” He was instantly wary. Not a lot of people had his number. “Who is it?”

“Uh...not sure. No one you have saved.” The number looked vaguely familiar to her, but it wasn’t one she had memorized. She tossed him the phone so he could find out.

He fumbled the catch, and spent a few seconds listening. He went white and almost dropped his phone again.

“Nick?”

His hands shaking, he replayed the message on speaker.

_“Um, hi. This is...this is Sam Winchester.”_

Jody’s eyes widened, but she stayed quiet, listening to the whole message. “I didn’t give him your number,” she said, when he didn’t say anything; he just stood there, shaking all over, turning the phone around and around in his hands.

He jumped when she spoke, but that seemed to snap him out of his raw fear, at least. “I...I know.”

Okay, good. That was one fight they didn’t need to have. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“T-talk to him.” He slid down to sit on the floor, his back against the wall. “I don’t really have a choice.”

“You do,” she said. She considered for a minute, then sat down--not next to him; this wasn’t the time to maybe invade his personal space--but facing him, just out of reach, and putting them more or less on the same level again. “You can tell him no. Or ignore the message.” She didn’t _want_ him to do either of those things, of course. She was still convinced that, if he could just get past this first stumbling block and actually _talk_ to Sam, it would be good for both of them. But she knew how important it was for him to have some level of control over things, especially since so much of that had been taken away from him in the past.

“I can’t,” he said. “I don’t...I don’t think I…” He trailed off, then took a breath and visibly forced himself to go on. “You’re right. You’ve _been_ right, I just...I don’t want to…”

“I could tell him for you,” she suggested. “If you don’t want...if it’ll be too hard on you to see him, I can be your messenger.” She’d offered before, and he’d turned her down, but maybe now, he’d change his mind.

But, no. He shook his head. “I don’t want...I don’t want you in the middle of this until you have to be.”

“Okay.” She _still_ didn’t like the way he insisted on uninvolving her, but she’d cave--for now--if it made this easier on Nick. And there _was_ something to be said for the idea that this Darkness, whatever it was, was _way_ above her paygrade anyway. Just the way Sam said the word--audible capitalization and all--indicated that. Plus, she had the girls to think about.

Still, she _really_ didn’t like him facing that kind of danger--not alone, technically, but without someone he trusted backing him up.

At least he was acknowledging she might _have_ to get involved eventually, whether they liked it or not.

“Are you going to call him back?” she asked.

“No,” he said, and that was a much faster answer, to her surprise.

“No?”

“I can’t...I can’t do this over the phone. I won’t know who’s really on the other end, you know?”

She opened her mouth to argue, but--well, he had a point. He’d know Sam’s voice, of course, but that didn’t mean _Sam_ was the one using it, for reasons ranging from possession to shapeshifters to something that could just plain mimic him. Angels were among the things that could do that, at least according to the books. And there was no way to test for any of them over the phone. Not that she’d come across, anyway.

“What, then?”

“I’ll...I’ll set a meeting,” he said, after thinking it over for a few more minutes. “When he...when he gets there, I can…I have the holy oil, don’t I?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, taking and releasing a long, slow breath. “Okay, that’s what I’ll do. Set a meeting, go from there.” With hands that were still shaking, he carefully tapped out a text message. “It’s done.”

“You okay?”

He didn’t answer right away, still staring down at his phone. “I…now that it’s...you know, I’m not actually...maybe?” He made a face and ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I mean, I’m...I’m pretty sure that this...th-the Darkness, or whatever he called it...that’s what I felt last summer. I felt...I felt the same thing, when he...when he said it. And you...you’ve wanted me to call him for a while, even before this all...happened, right?”

She didn’t answer right away, considering the best way to word it. “I think the two of you can help each other. I think it’d be _better_ if it weren’t under circumstances like these.”

“But I don’t think either of us would have been able to make the call if it wasn’t,” Nick said quietly. He reached for her hand. She let him take it, moving to sit next to him, against the wall. “I know _I_ wouldn’t.” He laughed a little, nervous and uncertain and without any real humor. “I still think he’s gonna shoot me.”

“He’s not,” she said.

“Part of me believes you,” he said. “But I’m more worried about Dean, anyway, since I vaguely remember he _actually_ shot me once.”

 _Right._ “Technically, he wasn’t shooting _you…_ ” She knew it was a weak defense, but she had to say it anyway.

He smiled a little. It was shaky, but still a smile. “Yeah, I know. Try telling that to the picture in my head, though.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “You sure you don’t want me to be there?”

“I’m sure,” he said. “I’ll...look, if something goes wrong, you know I’ll call, right? And, either way, I’ll call you after.” He hesitated. “And it’s not just because…”

“Yeah?”

“I mean...it’d be a lot to take in, you know? For them. Probably. The two of us being together, I mean.” He twined his fingers in hers. “I sort of...it’s gonna be hard enough to stay focused with...with all the baggage I bring by myself. I don’t want…I don’t want this to be any messier than it already has to be.”

“And if I show up, they’ll know right then and there that we’re together, and you figure it should be one conversation at a time?” she guessed.

He nodded. “And, I mean, of course that’s a conversation that has to happen sometime. Even without the...without all this. I know that, even if I’ve been stalling.” He gave her a crooked little smile.

“No, I get it.” It was a less aggravating reason for her to stay behind, anyway. And he might even be right, about not wanting to confuse or complicate either conversation. Especially since neither one was exactly likely to be easy.

She did sort of think it might be a better option to tell the boys about her and Nick _before_ getting into the heavy world-ending stuff. Because, the longer they delayed that conversation, the more painful it might be. And the end-of-the-world discussion might actually go a lot _better_ if Sam and Dean had reason to invest in Nick as a person, not just an uneasy ally they might need for a while.

Of course, the potentially world-ending questions were a little more time-sensitive, and a little more important in the grand scheme of things. And, like Nick said, both conversations would happen eventually. It probably didn’t make _that_ much of a difference in terms of awkwardness which one came first. Their personal lives could probably wait.

Either way, definite progress had been made, on more than one front. They couldn’t do anything else until after Nick met with the boys. One way or another, they’d know what to do from there.

 


	9. Part 1, Chapter IX

**IX.**

 

There weren’t any other cars parked outside when they reached the address Nick had given them: an abandoned warehouse on the edge of Sioux Falls.

“Looks like we beat him here,” Dean said.

Sam nodded, but he wasn’t so sure. They didn’t really have much of a frame of reference for how Nick thought, or how paranoid he was, but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he’d parked farther away and walked in.

“Weapons?” Dean suggested.

Sam considered a minute. “Just the basics. Nick’s still human.” And still a _victim._ Sam _had_ to think of him that way first--a human victim, rather than a twisted, demonic collaborator--or he would never be able to get through this meeting. Let Dean, who had a little more distance, look for traps and be paranoid for the both of them. Hopefully, that would be enough to see them through.

Dean nodded, and they geared up and headed into the warehouse.

Sam’s initial thought turned out to be correct. Nick was waiting for them, mostly in shadow, about halfway down the large, dilapidated room.

Before either of them could stop him, Nick dropped a match and a line of fire leapt up between them and him.

Sam flinched back, and Dean stepped half in front of him.

“Holy fire,” Nick said, his face chalk-white, a patchwork of burn scars decorating his face, making him almost monstrous in the flickering light.

 _Victim,_ Sam reminded himself. _Nick is a victim, not a monster._

And, as if to emphasize that, Nick’s hands were shaking visibly even in the dim light. His voice was steady enough, though. “You cross it, _then_ we talk.”

Dean glowered at him, but Sam put a hand on his arm, because that...that made _sense._ He’d had the same thought before coming here, when Nick had first set the terms of this damn meeting. “Remember the last time he saw me?” he asked in a low voice. _Hell, the_ only _time he ever saw me was back in Detroit, when Lucifer made the switch._ This--meeting like this, face-to-face, was probably almost as terrifying for Nick as it was for him.

Sam had just been surprised, that all. He hadn’t expected Nick to get his hands on holy oil, or anything that rare and dramatic. A banishing sigil, maybe--Sam had been all set to cast one himself, just in case; had a knife ready up his sleeve and everything. But this...once the initial, knee-jerk, ‘suddenly there is fire and the person who set it isn’t exactly my friend’ response had passed, it made perfect sense. Apart from wondering where the hell Nick had found holy oil, anyway.

His brother nodded once. “Fine,” he called to Nick. “But you gotta do the same thing.”

Nick shivered, but nodded. “Fair.”

“On the count of three, then?” Sam said.

He nodded again. “Fine.”

“One, two, three.” All three of them--because Sam dragged Dean along with him--moved, switching sides of the fire. No one burned. No one died.

“We good?” Sam asked.

Nick took a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah. Let’s...let’s talk.”

Sam and Dean exchanged another look, then Sam took a deep breath. “Okay. Um. I guess we could...do you know anything about the Darkness?”

Nick flinched and stared into the fire. “Uh. I don’t...it doesn’t work like that. N-not for me. I didn’t even know the...the name for it until I got your message.”

“Okay. What _do_ you know? About...about what’s going on right now?”

“Not...much,” he said. “I know that...this past summer, something happened. Something ancient and…” He paused again, as if trying to find the right words, then shook his head. “I don’t know how to...h-how to describe it, but this...this _thing,_ whatever it was, it woke up. I blanked out for a few seconds--it _hurt._ And since then, I’ve been having…”

Sam’s heart sank. Maybe Dean was right about that, too. But if Dean was right, then his visions _hadn’t_ been coming from God, they’d been coming from…

 _No. No, that’s not possible. It_ can’t _be._

“Visions?” Dean asked for him. Dean was hard to read on this whole mess, other than being adamant about avoiding the Cage. Which Sam couldn’t really blame him for, but if talking to Lucifer directly was what had to happen to fix this mess, he’d suck it up and do what he had to do.

But, to Sam’s relief, Nick shook his head. “I don’t...I don’t know that I’d call them visions? Nightmares, though. New and different ones. Vague, primal--it’s sort of hard to explain.”

Of course, Sam suddenly remembered, at least one of his visions--if that _was_ a vision; it hadn’t really felt like any of the others--had been explicitly a dream. And even his regular dreams had been unsettled lately, though fortunately that was the only one that had involved something pretending to be his father to deliver a cryptic message.

On the other hand, there was what Crowley had told him, back when he was helping Sam cast Gadreel out, and what Sam had sort of halfway known beforehand, about vessels being able to pick up certain things from the angel possessing them. At least in terms of what the angel saw and did. But if Nick had had any other kind of bleed-over…

Sam wouldn’t wish it on him. On _anyone._ But, if he _had,_ Dean might be right. This really might be the way to save the world. “Is there...I mean, are you picking up any information from the nightmares?” Sam asked. “Any...any hint of what to do to deal with the Darkness?”

Nick shook his head again. “No. No, nothing that...nothing that clear. I’m sorry, I don’t...I don’t know what to tell you. I just know that s-something is happening, and I can’t hide from it. I think...I think whatever...wh-whatever’s going on, I’m involved.” He sounded desperately afraid and unhappy about that, and Sam couldn’t blame him for it.

Especially since, whatever he was getting, whether it was images or visions or just leftover memories from his possession, Nick had exactly zero context for it. He didn’t even have the limited information _they_ had. He was completely flying blind.

Sam glanced over at Dean, who shrugged.

“I guess...I guess we could tell you what we know,” Sam said. “Maybe see if that clarifies anything for you? Sparks any clearer memories, or whatever?”

Nick shivered, but nodded. “Okay. Uh. I can’t...I’m not promising anything, but I’ll try.”

Which was all they could ask him to do anyway. And, as a part of Sam still thought, it was maybe more than they _should_ be asking him to do.

But they were here. And desperate times called for desperate measures, after all.

As quickly and concisely as they could, Sam and Dean filled Nick in on what they knew about the Darkness--what Dean had picked up from Amara, what Death had told them, what Metatron had told Cas, even the vague rumors they’d gotten from less-reliable sources.

By the time they finished, Nick was chalk-white around his scars, but he wasn’t bolting. “What...what exactly do you want me to do?” he whispered.

“We’re still trying to figure that out,” Dean said.

And, even if it was less likely now that Nick was maybe on board, Sam had to say it. “But it’s possible that...” Sam swallowed. “That we have to…”

Nick flinched back. “I can’t. I can’t go, I can’t--please, please don’t ask me to--”

Before Nick could finish his sentence, somewhere above them, Sam heard a faint _pop,_ almost like--

And then Nick was falling, _bleeding._

“Sniper!” Dean yelled.

Sam put it together and dove for Nick in the same instant, hoping to cover him as best he could. There were almost certainly more shots coming. Damn it, what the _hell_ had just happened?

He could figure that out later; for now, Nick was too damned exposed; Sam needed to get him under cover. But, less than halfway through his dive, he knew he wouldn’t make it. There was too damn much ground between them, and he stumbled a little, and missed Nick, and then Nick was just _gone_ \--bleeding heavily, judging by the drops he could already see in the firelight, but an adrenaline surge would probably keep him moving forward. And Sam couldn’t really blame him, but what if they _did_ need him, what if this screwed over their best chance to stop Amara, what if Nick _died_ because they’d met with him--

 _We got shot at, this was our fault, we brought Nick into this. At that distance, that accurate, the shooter must have used a rifle._ Fuck, _who the fuck would be_ shooting _at us? Or maybe they’re_ not _shooting at_ us _\--but what kind of thing that might want Nick dead would use a fucking_ gun? _No, we were the targets, we had to be the targets but who could--if this was freaking_ Cole _again I swear to God I’ll--_ but, then, on the other hand, Cole had never really come at them from a distance like this, he’d always gotten up close and personal as soon as he’d had a target.

All of that went through Sam’s brain in a split second, and none of it solved anything. Nick was still gone, and there was still someone fucking _shooting_ at them. “Fuck!”

“Go after him,” Dean said. “I got the shooter.”

He nodded once and pelted after Nick, keeping an eye on the blood trail and hoping he found him before something else went horribly fucking wrong.

 

 


	10. Part 1, Chapter X

**X.**

 

Dean tracked the rifle’s probable trajectory just like he’d been taught--even if he’d almost never had to _use_ this skill, since not much of what he’d ever hunted actually _used_ rifles, it was a good one to have. And he was damned grateful Bobby had drilled him in it now.

The shot hadn’t been all that easy--a crapload of things were between the likely perch and where Nick had been standing. Dean wouldn’t be able to tell for sure until he got up there, but he figured the sniper might not have even seen him and Sam until after the shot went off and they started moving. All of that taken together meant that, for whatever reason, Nick had been the actual target--and that, since Nick’s brains weren’t being barbecued by holy fire right now, the sniper wanted him _alive._

All of that meant Dean had no freaking clue who--or what--he might be dealing with. Him or Sam as the target, yeah, it was a pretty damn short list of things that used rifles, but at least he’d know where to _start._

Dean found the catwalk access nearest where the sniper had set up and scrambled up as fast as he could, keeping his own gun in one hand so he’d be ready to shoot as soon as he had a target. Not that he actually intended to _kill_ the sniper--not until he learned who the fuck he was and what the fuck he was after, at least. It _could_ have been completely unrelated to what they were working on--someone who recognized Nick from back when he was possessed, out for a little revenge.

Except Dean was pretty sure no one who had seen Lucifer’s--or Nick’s--face that year was still alive, except him and Sam and Cas and maybe a demon or two. Assuming any had survived Crowley cleaning house when he took over Hell. Besides, he didn’t really believe in coincidences anymore, and that would’ve been one _hell_ of a coincidence.

He reached the top of the ladder and took a precious half-second to get his bearings and wait for his eyes to adjust. The warehouse was lit only by the line of holy fire Nick had deployed and weak, late-fall sunlight coming through the odd gap in the walls. Up in the catwalks, farther from the fire, it was _dark._

He caught sight of a shadow moving along the catwalk, jumping over to another and continuing on towards the wall and possibly an exit.

He shot at the shadow, knowing he would probably miss--a handgun, at this distance, in the dark, at a moving target? Yeah. _Maybe_ he’d get lucky and clip him, but the chances were pretty slim. He knew better than to plan on that. But at least the bastard would know he wasn’t getting away clean.

Sure enough, his shot glanced off the catwalk railing a foot or so away from the sniper, shooting off sparks but not enough light to give Dean a clear picture of what he was dealing with.

The sniper returned fire, of course. It was odd, though--granted, the darkness was working against him just as much as it was against Dean, but his shots were going a little _too_ wide, even for suppression fire. Hitting Nick the way he had couldn’t have been easy. In fact, given the trajectory and all the crap in his way, a clean kill shot would have been _easier_ than just winging him. The sniper’s bullets should be getting a lot _closer,_ even if maybe not actually _hitting_ Dean at this point.

But he could sort all that out later, once he had the guy trussed up for questioning. He picked up his pace, and so did the sniper, but he was gaining--Dean was _faster._

The catwalk swayed under them, and the sniper half-turned to lay down another burst of suppression fire. This time, Dean was absolutely positive the sniper was _actively avoiding_ hitting him. He was closer now, and while he was still a moving target, he was moving in a more or less straight line, directly at him, and yet none of the shots even came _close._

 _What the ever-loving_ fuck.

No time to speculate.

With a last burst of speed, he made a flying, leaping tackle, crashing into the sniper from behind and driving him facedown into the catwalk, which was now swaying back and forth and making a not-all-that-reassuring creaking noise. Dean slammed the butt of his pistol into back of the sniper’s head before he could put up any real resistance, and felt him go limp.

Breathing hard, he waited a few seconds for the catwalk to steady at least a little, then pulled a ziptie out of his pocket and tied the sniper’s hands behind his back before rolling him over. He pulled out his phone, for light to see his face, and--

Dean’s phone clattered to the catwalk and he scrambled back several paces.

_What--but--how--what the--????????_

_“...Dad?”_

 


	11. Part 2: Who Is Like God?, Chapter I

**_Part 2: Who is Like God?_ **

 

 

**I.**

 

As soon as he developed any kind of awareness, John Winchester knew that something was wrong.

For starters, he was fucking _breathing._ Last he’d checked, he was dead--clawed his way out of Hell along with hundreds of fucking demons when the fucking floodgates opened, watched Dean shoot Yellow Eyes in the fucking face, and then…

He didn’t remember much after that, but he knew damn well that escaping from Hell hadn’t made him fucking _alive_ again, and yet here he was. With weight on his limbs and blood in his veins and air in his fucking lungs.

He played dead for a minute, keeping as still as he could; not even opening his eyes, just listening for some kind of clue as to where the fuck he was and what the fuck had happened.

No traffic sounds meant he was somewhere remote, or maybe underground; possibly both.

Water was dripping off in the distance; a leaky pipe, probably. Underground was becoming more likely.

He could hear additional faint breathing that wasn’t his, and he was pretty sure it was only one other set of lungs. Single guard, most likely; could be worse. Assuming he could figure out what the hell the guard was with any type of speed and accuracy. And that there weren’t other guards that didn’t fucking _need_ to breathe.

Next came a faint clink, like a stone being set down on something metal. It didn’t echo very much, which meant he and whoever-the-fuck the other breather was were probably in a fairly small room with walls that at least partially absorbed sound.

The room wasn’t especially cold, but he was lying on something hard--probably the ground, covered by what felt like rough carpet.

He held his position, motionless, for a solid five fucking minutes, counting the seconds, keeping his breaths as shallow and quiet and even as possible, listening for any new sounds.

When none came, he cautiously opened one eye.

The room was dim, with warm yellow light coming from a corner just outside John’s frame of vision. He was lying on the floor, just like he’d figured, next to a cheap, piece-of-shit metal folding card table.

There were no windows, at least not that he could see from this angle--not definitive, but another clue that they were probably underground. What he could see of the wall was whitewashed plaster, and the carpet was a dingy, dirty grey. No dead plants, or any other weird shit he would’ve expected to see after someone was dragged back from the dead, so that most likely meant he’d been moved here after the fact.

There was one man sitting at the table, scribbling on a notepad with a vaguely rounded square stone on the table next to it. He was the only other person in the room, so far as John could tell, but probably hadn’t been the one to move him. Which could mean he had backup John would have to deal with later. He certainly didn’t look like he could have hauled John down here--wherever here was--by himself; he was short, kind of tubby, with a patchy, greying beard.

Of course, his appearance didn’t mean a fucking thing. John knew better than to trust what the man seemed to be. And, if he hadn’t been the one to haul John down here, he was at least enough of a threat to be left behind as a guard. Or, another possibility--one he liked even fucking less--was that Tubby was the boss of the operation, and had fucking minions to do the heavy lifting; and some other attribute or strength or just plain charisma, kept his brutes in line.

And the door was behind the tubby guy and slightly to the right. So John would have to immobilize him long enough and effectively enough and get past him.

_All right. Get past him, get the fuck out of here, then figure out what the fuck is going on._

It sure as hell wouldn’t be easy. Tubby was facing him, and John didn’t have any access to anything remotely like a weapon. He could flip the table in the bastard’s face, or bash him over the head with that rock; that might at least stun him for a second or two, buy John time to get to the door. Or it might not; not knowing what Tubby _was_ made making the call a fucking pain in the ass.

But the longer he waited, the slimmer his chances got. He didn’t have much choice, other than to wing it. _Fuck._

Moving by inches, John maneuvered himself into a position he could launch from, pausing frequently to make sure Tubby hadn’t noticed him shifting. While he moved, he thought through the next few minutes, laying groundwork in his mind for what he’d do when he got past Tubby and through the door.

_Okay. Once I’m out of here, next step--don’t waste time. Steal a car, call--no, not the boys, no idea what the hell their numbers might be now. If they’re smart, they’ve switched phones at least once since I died. And I don’t want them in this ‘til I know what the fuck is going on. I’ll call Bobby. He mostly stopped being a fucking jackass while Dean and I were in the hospital, and he’s got a couple permanent numbers I can try. Yeah. Call Bobby, get an update, see where the hell things stand and how fucking long I’ve been dead._

He couldn’t plan any farther ahead than that, and he was as well-positioned as he could be with small, subtle movements. Tubby hadn’t looked up from his notebook once-- _kind of a shitty guard_ \--but even his apparent distraction wouldn’t cover John for much longer.

John took one more breath, then launched himself up and at the table, grabbing for the stone, and--

He _stumbled,_ reeling, with the little room spinning around him, and landed right on his ass again, less than two fucking steps from where he’d started. This wasn’t right.

Tubby had stood up and backed away a little when he moved; he could see that now. “Easy there, big guy,” he said, holding out a slightly shaking hand. “You’ve been dead for a while, it might take a minute to find your feet again.”

“Who the fuck are you?” John asked. His voice still worked, at least, even if it was hoarser than he remembered. _How long have I been fucking dead?_

“My name’s Marv,” he said. “And I’m a Prophet of the Lord.”

 


	12. Part 2, Chapter II

**II.**

 

For a long moment, neither of them said anything.

“You’re a _what?_ ” John finally asked.

“A Prophet of the Lord,” Marv repeated. “Don’t--don’t look at me like that. I’m human, I promise. You can test me any way you want later. I just…” He shrugged. “I can hear what the angels say, and read the tablet.” He indicated the stone. “It contains the Word of God.”

Right. Word of God tablet--it made about as much fucking sense as anything else that had happened since John woke up. Either way, he could ask more detail once he had a better idea of what the fuck was going on. One thing he _was_ sure about, though--he would abso-fucking-lutely be testing to confirm Marv was who and what he said he was. Once he could stand without falling over. And gain access to water to bless and some silver.

_Are all resurrections this fucking disorienting, or just the angelic ones?_

“...and why the hell should I believe you?” he asked.

“Look, I’m working with Michael,” he said.

“Michael?”

“Yeah, the Archangel. Don’t you--” He frowned. “You’re supposed to remember now.”

And…

It was weird, like looking through fogged glass or murky water, but, after a second, something drifted to the surface of John’s mind.

 

  
_A curtain of light spilled over him, and a voice spoke._

_“I am the Archangel Michael.”_

_His head ached, Mary and those boys--somehow his sons,_ their _sons, from the_ future, _how was this his life--were in danger, that crazy redhead was straight-up trying to_ kill them, _and he had no idea what the hell was going on or how he’d gotten out here and--_

_An_ Archangel? _Seriously?_

_“I can save her,” the voice--Michael--said. “Your wife, I can save her. But it will require a sacrifice on your part.”_

_Well, the Archangel was putting things in terms John understood, at least. “Anything,” he croaked._

_“I want to make sure you understand. I will be possessing you--taking complete control of your mind and body. It will be brief, but it may be unpleasant, perhaps even traumatic.”_

_“I don’t care. Save her.”_

_“So you’re saying yes?”_

_“Yes.”_

 

The memory faded, blurring out in a scream of white-hot light. John sank back, rubbing at his temples a little bit, trying to reorient himself back into the present. _Hell._ Maybe Marv _was_ telling the truth.

The Prophet was watching him, nervous on the surface, but John could’ve sworn there was a thin layer of smug satisfaction under it. But then he blinked, and all he saw was the nerves.

“Say I believe you,” he finally said. “Why the hell didn’t I remember that until now?”

Marv shifted uneasily. “You’d have to ask Michael about that.”

“Okay, fine. Where can I find him?”

“See, that’s the thing.” Marv hesitated half a second. “He’s...he can’t really communicate all that well, not with Earth. He’s in the Cage.” The capital letter was practically audible.

“The Cage? What Cage?”

“Yeah.” Marv fiddled with his pen. “It was built for--for Lucifer.”

John stared at him. “And Michael ended up in there… _how?_ ”

“It...well, it’s kind of a long story.” He took a deep breath. “The short version is: things got messy, the Apocalypse got started a few years back, and when Sam dragged Lucifer b--”

“Sam?” John cut him off. “My Sam?”

“Yeah,” Marv said, sounding almost surprised for a second, then comprehension dawned all over his face and he shook his head. “Right, you were dead when that happened. Uh. Yes, your son Sam. He saved the world, you know. Agreed to let Lucifer possess him, managed to take control, jumped into the Cage to stop the Apocalypse. Michael got dragged along with him.”

John didn’t quite know what to say to that. There had been _rumors_ \--vague, uncertain rumors--about the Plans Yellow-Eyes had had relating to Sam and the other kids. Plans that involved Lucifer. The whispers were there, if you knew where to look, who to ask. But he hadn’t ever been able to get much detail, not even when the bastard had possessed _him._

“And Michael...Michael brought me back,” John said slowly. “Why?”

“Because of the Darkness,” Marv said.

 _Brief, vague, and ominous. Fucking great._ “What’s the Darkness?”

“I’m...uh, I haven’t been given a lot of detail,” he admitted. “But, well, the Darkness is ancient. Pre-Creation ancient. God’s _sister,_ if you believe the rumors.”

_So, unkillable ancient enemy with a name just vague enough to inspire terror._

“Supposedly,” Marv continued, “He had to lock her away in order to create the universe. It’s what He made the Archangels for.”

“Still don’t get why that means bringing me back,” John said. “Why don’t the Archangels handle her?”

“Well, uh...Raphael was killed in the post-Apocalyptic angelic civil war,” Marv said. “Gabriel is...yeah, he’s gone, too. And Michael...well, you can’t free one of ‘em from the Cage without letting the other out, too. And I think we can _all_ agree that letting Lucifer out would be a bad idea.”

Well, that last sentence, at least, was fucking true enough. “Fine.” John sure as hell wanted more information about the fucking civil war Marv had mentioned, to say nothing of the lack of detail in his answer about Gabriel, but that could wait. “Michael can’t deal with her. Why tap me?”

“Because you’re really, really good at what you do,” Marv said. “And you already had a mostly-positive relationship with an Archangel, even if it was short.”

Meaning he’d be more likely to be fucking pliable and do whatever Michael, through his prophet, said.

Michael, who had promised him-- _I can save her._

 _Angels are watching over us,_ Mary’s voice echoed down the years.

Even if Michael had kept his word in the moment, John knew damn well what angels’ promises were worth in the long run.

Still, maybe-- _maybe_ \--John could see the value in allying with them. If Marv was telling the truth about what the Darkness was, she needed to be brought down. And he wasn’t about to sit out a fight that important, not now that he was alive and active again. Even if Michael only came through when it damn well pleased him to do it. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to just fucking roll over for them, ally or not. “And what if I say no?”

Marv sighed. “That is your choice. Angels aren’t demons. That sort of thing matters upstairs.”

“So I just get to walk away?” He couldn’t fucking believe it. That wasn’t how the world fucking _worked._ At the very least, his fucking resurrection was probably contingent on his help. And, whether or not he was pleased about being back, living things--and undead ones, too--generally had some kind of built-in sense of self preservation. Even now, John was no exception.

Or worse--if John didn’t play by their fucking rules, Michael might see to it that his resurrection undid everything he’d died for. Up to and including everything Dean had done with the life John had bought for him.

Of course, if these sons of bitches tried to blackmail him like that, he’d fight it with everything he fucking had, but he needed to know what kind of hand he’d been dealt so he could plan his next move.

“That’s right,” Marv said, despite John’s misgivings. “You can walk away at any time. Of course, if you do that, you take with you our best chance of locking the Darkness away again. We might even have a shot at killing her, with your help.”

Different kind of blackmail there. Much more effective. _Fuck these guys._ “And what chance is that? What would I have to do?”

“So, you’re in?”

John glowered at him. “I’m hearing you out.” He sure as fuck wasn’t about to commit to anything yet. Not without a hell of a lot more information on what exactly Michael had brought him back to do. He’d pretty much already decided, he realized, that he believed what Marv was telling him. Or, at any rate, it was probably in his best interests to proceed as if he did, and keep an eye out for inconsistencies as the Prophet went on.

Marv quailed a little, then took a deep breath. “Okay. So, like I said, it took God and all the Archangels to bind the Darkness before, right? Only, God is...well, no one really knows _where_ God is right now. And the Archangels, we already covered. Dead and/or gone, the lot of them. But they all left pieces on Earth.”

“Pieces?”

He nodded. “Yeah. See, when an angel--or an Archangel--abandons a vessel, they leave a piece of their essence, their Grace, behind.”

“So, that’s why you need me. Because I have a piece of Michael?” That would make a hell of a lot more sense than any other fucking reason he could come up with. Still, John’s skin crawled a little at the thought of a piece of some kind of monster inside him--and, because he knew damn well how the world worked, he was pretty damn sure the Archangel was just as much a monster as any other ugly he’d dealt with over the years.

Marv shook his head. “Not anymore. See, the Grace won’t decay with _time,_ but any kind of major angelic healing or influence after will wipe it out. And any kind of resurrection will, too, whether or not an angel’s involved.”

“Right.” He couldn’t decide if he was disappointed or relieved. What bothered him more was that, with that ruled out, none of this explained why the fuck Michael had resurrected him. Which was the question he’d fucking asked in the first place. Marv sure as fuck took his sweet damn time getting to the fucking point. Working with him-- _if_ John decided to--was going to be a pain in the ass.

“There’s two other ways Grace gets left behind--first, if the vessel is destroyed or damaged badly enough by a Heavenly weapon while possessed, there’s usually a little Grace trapped in whatever blood or other bits and pieces are left,” Marv said.

“Meaning what, exactly?” he asked.

“Well, angels shed Grace when they’re injured, the way humans shed blood, but there has to be enough damage to the vessel that some piece of them can contain the shed Grace, right?”

“Right. And the other way?” John asked.

“Grace can be deliberately removed,” he said, fiddling with his pen some more. “Either completely or in pieces.”

There was some sort of undercurrent there, something that Marv didn’t like or just flat didn’t want to discuss, but John wasn’t sure how to read it yet. _Dammit._ Stupid fucking resurrection was throwing _everything_ off; the room was still a little blurry on the edges and inclined to move with him, and he couldn’t get a clear fucking read on the fucking Prophet.

John shook his head, trying to clear it as best he could, and dragged his focus back to the actual conversation at hand. “And all the Archangels did one of those things? All of them left some Grace behind?”

Marv nodded, and ticked them off on his fingers. “Michael got hit with a holy fire Molotov cocktail. Most angels, that kind of attack would straight-up end them, but Archangels are sturdier. Both he and his vessel at the time survived the actual _fire,_ but he was damaged badly enough to force a temporary retreat. The ashes he dropped on his way out should have some of his Grace in them.”

 _So, that’s one,_ John thought. And a useful tidbit, too. _Need to figure out how the hell to make holy fire and get some. Just in case._

“Raphael’s first vessel was turned into salt, as Lot’s wife was,” Marv went on. “It exploded all around him, and he had to track down a new one. We find the salt, we have Raphael’s Grace.”

 _Simple enough, even if it’ll take a hell of a lot of time._ Could be worse. At least the Prophet knew what the fuck they needed to find.

“Gabriel cut out a fragment of his own Grace, and hid it with his final instructions on how to shove Lucifer back in the Cage. And Lucifer…” Marv paused for a second. “Lucifer left a living vessel.”

 _Shit._ “Sam?” Marv hadn’t said how the Grace needed to be extracted, other than a living ex-vessel needed to be alive for it to work, but John had a sneaking suspicion it would be hellishly painful. Possibly--probably--fatal. If everything Marv said turned out to be true, and _if_ it was the only way, he’d do it. Ending or even just trapping the Darkness, assuming she lived up to the hype, was that fucking important. But he hoped, with quiet desperation, that he wouldn’t have to.

To John’s relief, the prophet shook his head again. “No. Sam’s died and been resurrected at least once since then, plus he was possessed by another angel for a few months. His Grace fragment is long gone. But Lucifer had a backup vessel, guy named Nick Cross, while he was working on getting Sam’s consent. _He’s_ still alive.”

Okay, fine. John could handle that. And he _finally_ had a pretty damn good guess why he was back. “And you need me to track all these pieces down.”

He nodded again. “You’re one of the best, you know?”

He considered everything Marv was telling him for a long moment. _If_ Marv was telling the truth, (and, fine, he’d pretty much decided that he was) working this made a hell of a lot of sense. It was something he could get behind, at least in principle. Something he’d actually be fucking _good_ at. Because Marv was right--he was one of the best. Plus, there was the son of a bitch who had let fucking Lucifer run wild in the world…

Yeah. Just for the opportunity to come at _him,_ this was almost worth it.

But he’d need more details to find these pieces. And to figure out what the fuck to do with them once he did, but that was a ways down the road. The important thing for now was to track down the fucking Archangel fragments as fast as he could. “All right,” he said.

“So, you’re on board?” Marv leaned forward, eagerly.

“For now,” John said. “What else can you tell me about the pieces?”

“Well, you’ll probably resonate with Michael’s ashes, since he possessed you, too,” Marv said. “Plus, I know almost exactly where they were dropped. We can pick those up first, they’ll be easiest. The salt might take a while to find, but I’ve got some leads on a couple dozen places where it might have happened for you to run down. And I can get you a picture to go with the name to help track down Lucifer’s vessel. As for Gabriel…” He fidgeted a little.

God, that was getting annoying really fucking fast. “What?”

“Well, his last instructions were given to your sons. ...on a porn DVD. Gabriel was...Gabriel.”

“...we’ll leave that for last,” John decided. He still didn’t want to bring the boys into this until the last possible minute. There were too many questions left unanswered. About what they’d been up to in the past however long, too; other than jumping into Hell with a pair of angry Archangels and watching angel porn.

“No objections here,” Marv said. And if John didn’t know any better, he’d’ve said the prophet was _relieved_ at the idea.

John filed that impression away for later. It might be important, might just be him jumping at shadows--he _was_ still a little scrambled from being dead for however-the-fuck long. Might even just be that Marv didn’t want to have a front-row seat to their reunion, and wanted some time to make himself scarce. “So, Michael’s ashes. Where do we go to get them?”

“Stull Cemetery, in Lawrence, Kansas,” Marv answered promptly.

 _Fine._ “When do we leave?”

“Uh. You still seem a little…” Marv made a wavy gesture with his hand, and John glowered at him. “Tomorrow?”

“Fine.” As much as he hated to admit it, Marv wasn’t wrong. He moved on to the next thing. “I need a phone.”

Marv nodded. “Yeah, sure. Uh. Who were you planning on calling, exactly?”

“A friend.”

He sighed. “You know, this whole thing will work a lot better if you actually _talk_ to me. I mean, if nothing else, I could tell you if your phone call would be wasting your time.”

 _Fuck._ He had a point. “Bobby Singer.”

Marv winced. “Yeah, uh, he died, a few years back. Monster shot him in the head.”

And he’d never managed to finish burying the hatchet with the old bastard. _Fuck._ He ran through his mental list of contacts, trying to come up with someone else who was alive, had a permanent number, and wouldn’t try to kill him through the goddamn phone.

It was a pretty damn short list.

“Ellen Harvelle,” he tried. She’d reached out to him not long before he died. She’d been willing to help with Yellow Eyes. Chances were she’d be just as willing now. Worth a shot, at least.

“She’s...uh.”

“She’s dead, too,” John finished for him.

“Yeah. She and her daughter blew up during the Apocalypse.”

 _Fuck. Fuck, fuck,_ fuck. He thought for a few more minutes--he really wanted another source on what the fuck was happening besides the Prophet. A source he _knew._ “What about Rufus Turner?” he finally asked. He’d only worked with Rufus a handful of times, but they’d parted on more or less civil terms when Turner had gone hermit on them. At the very least, he should be able to get some straight fucking answers. Hermit or not, he doubted Turner had stayed _completely_ out of the loop all these years.

“Stabbed, by...uh, a friend of his got possessed.”

_Shit._

“How long have I been dead?” he finally asked.

Marv fidgeted again. “Uh. Ten years, give or take.”

“Ten _years?_ ”

“Give or take.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck._ There was no way of knowing how much things had fucking changed if he’d been dead ten fucking _years._ Chances were, _no one_ he’d known from before was still alive; except the boys. Marv had said his boys were alive.

There was that, at least.

_Fuck._

“John?” Marv sounded nervous again, or maybe even worried.

John couldn’t wait until the fucking disorienting after-effects of this fucking resurrection wore off.

“Okay,” he said, shortly. “Ten years. Give or take. I get it.”

“John--”

“Just--shut up,” he said. He was more rattled than he liked letting on, and he was pretty damn sure he was a fucking open book at the moment.

“I’ll...uh...okay, then.” Marv gathered up his stone and his notebook and headed for the door. “I’ll just...be out there. Okay?”

“Just go.”

The door shut behind him and John slumped a little.

Ten fucking _years._

It took him a few minutes, but he finally managed to lock that shit down, and bury it deep. He could not afford it, not now. God’s fucking sister was running wild in the world, there were Archangel fragments to collect, and a goddamn irritating Prophet to tolerate.

He could process all this later, when it was over. When he’d won.

For now, he had work to do.

 

 


	13. Part 2, Chapter III

**III.**

 

John had more than a few misgivings about bringing Marv with him to comb the cemetery for the ashes. So far as he could tell, the Prophet had no clue how to handle, for lack of a better term, field work. Even if they wouldn’t actually big digging up any graves, he didn’t like going into any situation with a partner who had no idea what the fuck he was doing.

On the other hand, Marv supposedly had a mental map--or divine revelation, or whatever--that would guide them to the ashes. And even if John would supposedly resonate with them when he got close, he still had to _get_ close. He needed Marv for that.

“Any idea who this vessel was?” he asked, while they were waiting outside until they could slip in under cover of darkness. Not that it actually _mattered,_ especially not at this point, but he was curious. Besides, the more he learned about how Archangels and vessels functioned, the likelier it was that he’d be able to maneuver Cross where he wanted him.

Marv fidgeted a little. “It was supposed to be Dean.”

John blinked. “Dean?”

“Yeah. All kinds of metaphysical stuff built into him. Plus, you know, vessels come in bloodlines.”

And since _he’d_ been possessed by Michael, that meant Dean was suitable. “Right. You said supposed to be?”

“I did.” Marv sighed. “Michael delegated winning Dean over, so he didn’t have to use an interim vessel like Lucifer did. Only the angel he sent--Zachariah--botched it. He basically backed Dean into a corner, combination of threats and blackmail, and...uh, well, from what I hear, Dean’s got a stubborn streak that doesn’t exactly respond well to those tactics.”

Despite himself, John smiled a little. “Damn right he does.”

“So, Michael and Zachariah went to the bench.”

And then John froze a little inside. Because if vessels came in bloodlines, and Sam was earmarked for the Devil, then the only person left for Michael would be…

_Adam. Oh, fuck, no._

“From what I hear,” Marv went on, “I’m pretty sure they were planning on doing with Adam what Lucifer did with Cross.”

After all the effort he’d put in to keep Adam safe, out of the life--to let him be fucking _normal,_ to have things he hadn’t even _known_ were stalking his family come after the kid… _fuck._

“Dean never did cave, though. And I guess Adam was good enough to make it to the final round, even if he was sort of the lower calorie subst--”

John’s hands were on Marv’s throat before he even knew he was reaching for it. “Do _not,_ ” he said, “talk about my son that way. _Any_ of my sons.”

Marv, eyes wide, nodded frantically.

John let go, and sat back in the seat, listening to him cough and wheeze.

For a long moment, they sat in silence, which John finally broke. “Where’s Adam now?” If Michael had been dragged into the Cage, did that mean Adam had, too?”

Marv fidgeted and avoided John’s eyes. “Uh. Well, it’s...sort of...I can’t get a straight answer out of Michael on that, but he’s probably...he’s probably down with...yeah.”

He closed his eyes. _God fucking dammit._

“Look, John--”

“Drop it.”

Marv fell silent.

John cleared his throat and opened his eyes again. “We should be able to make for the cemetery in a few minutes. Almost full dark.”

“Right.”

“You know where we’re heading?”

“I know some landmarks, yeah. Then, once we get close, it’s up to you.”

He nodded. “All right.”

They didn’t speak after that. After another ten minutes or so, John signalled they were clear and got out of the car. Marv stayed close behind him while went through the gate, then John waited for Marv to take the lead.

“This way,” the Prophet whispered, then headed towards the back edge of the cemetery, where there were some of the older graves and a stand of trees.

As they got closer, John started to feel a low, heated thrum, somewhere at the back of his head. It wasn’t enough to be painful, or even all that distracting, but it was present and undeniable.

_Guess that’s what ‘resonating’ means. We must be close._

Marv stopped. “I think this is the spot. Anything?”

John didn’t answer out loud, just closed his eyes and picked his way through the graves. He kept most of his focus on the vibration, listening for it to get louder; but he kept his gun out and at least tried dividing his focus. Just in case.

He went around the area in slow circles for about a half-hour before he stopped. “I think it’s strongest here.”

“Okay,” Marv said, coming over and crouching down, poking at the grass to find the ashes.

John, his part done, diverted all of his focus back to watching for trouble.

“Got it.” Marv stood up and carefully deposited maybe a teaspoon of grey dust into a wooden containment box carved all over with sigils, some of which even John didn’t recognize.

“That’s all there is?” Part of him--part he locked down as tight as he could--tingled with grief, that that was the only piece of his youngest child left in the world. The rest of him, which he tried to pay attention to so it could drown out that other, worried that there might not be enough of Michael in the ashes to pull this off.

“Yeah,” Marv said.

 _Fuck._ Hopefully they wouldn’t need much. Although, on the plus side, Marv didn’t seem disappointed or concerned. If there was a problem, it didn’t look like Michael wasn’t telling him about it. And there wasn’t much else they could do to get Michael’s Grace without raiding the fucking Cage. “All right. Let’s go.”

He nodded, and the two of them headed back to the gate, Marv half-jogging to keep up, clinging tight to the box with Adam’s ashes.

 


	14. Part 2, Chapter IV

**IV.**

 

John was staking out the third house on Marv’s list--apparently, it had belonged to one of the aliases of a rogue angel’s vessel; the same rogue angel who had destroyed Raphael’s first vessel, apparently named Balthazar. Marv had uncovered four aliases, each with a couple houses to scope out. John had done some digging of his own and uncovered two _more_ of the vessel’s fucking aliases, though he hadn’t identified all the potential locations tied to them yet. All they knew, at this point, was that the relevant vessel-- _Raphael’s_ vessel--had been destroyed by Balthazar, in a house belonging to this guy.

He’d been here for about two hours, working to gauge the routines of the current occupants. Once he had those down, he could break in and scour the place for traces of Archangel salt without raising too much of a fuss. He had just gotten himself into a good position overlooking the garage when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

“Fuck,” he muttered, wriggling back on his tree branch to a slightly more secure place to check and see what the hell Marv wanted.

Except the call wasn’t from Marv. Or any other number he recognized. Unless the Prophet had gotten a new phone, but that didn’t seem likely.

He hesitated for half a second, trying to gauge whether or not he should answer--could be a problem, could be a fucking telemarketer. He decided that the chances of something innocuous were higher than a threat, and picked up.

“Yeah?”

“Hello, am I speaking with John Smith?” an unfamiliar female voice asked.

That wasn’t the name he’d used to get the phone--or the credit card he used to pay for it. “Yeah,” he said anyway, because claiming it was and keeping her talking was the only way to figure out who the fuck she was and why the fuck she was calling.

“Hi, my name is Lana Peters, I’m a nurse at Mercy Hospital, in Omaha. I’m calling regarding your cousin, Marv Jones,” she said. “He put you down as his emergency contact.”

 _...the hell?_ Okay, that explained the name and how the fuck she’d gotten his number, but why the fuck would Marv need a fucking emergency contact? Didn’t God--or Michael--keep track of him, keep him out of trouble? Or, since Michael was in the Cage and God was fucking AWOL, one of the other angels? They couldn’t _all_ have gone fucking rogue. “What happened?” he asked.

“He was mugged,” she said.

 _What the hell is going on here?_ “All right, I’m a few towns over, I’ll drive up. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Of course.”

He hung up on Nurse Peters and jotted down a few notes about the house before climbing down from the tree and heading for the truck.

 

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“You got jumped by a rogue angel?” John asked. _Another one? Fuck, how many of them are out there?_ Though that might explain why Marv hadn’t been protected. Even Archangels could be taken down by fucking rogues, and the Prophet was a hell of a lot easier to kill than Raphael would have been. So even if there _were_ other angels looking out for Marv, maybe they just hadn’t gotten there in time. This other rogue might have been faster, or even overwhelmed them.

 _Fuck. Exactly what we need, more roadblocks._ At least the Darkness didn’t seem to have caught on to what he and the Prophet were up to. Yet.

“Yeah,” Marv said. “Not Balthazar, he’s long dead. This guy’s the same one who finally killed Raphael, actually. His name’s Castiel. See, from what I hear, Heaven got unstable after Michael went down. After Raphael died, Castiel took over for a while, but pretty much all he did was kill other angels--the ones who’d backed Raphael against him--and then disappear. Since then, no angel’s been enough of a leader to keep Heaven united or stable.”

“What happened to him?” Because, Prophet-bashing monster or not, he was probably a better option upstairs than fucking infighting. Even cruel leadership was probably better than none at all. So long as whoever stepped in didn’t use the oh-so-convenient ‘external enemy’ excuse for uniting--or, at least, if they did, so long as that enemy wasn’t fucking Earth--John couldn’t care less who finally united Heaven, or how. It would probably cause less damage to fucking _everything_ than the kind of anarchy Marv described, was all. Besides, if this Castiel was busy running Heaven, he would probably stay off Marv’s back so the two of them could fucking get shit done.

“Well, like I said, he disappeared for a while, after winning the war against Raphael. He did turn back up eventually, but since then, he’s refused to take any responsibility for Heaven, other than to cut down the one _other_ guy who came close to stabilizing things.” Marv sounded particularly pissed about that.

Okay, maybe the downsides to putting Castiel in charge outweighed the advantages. Maybe he actually _wanted_ fucking anarchy, if he killed anyone who tried to stabilize things. “He gonna come after you again?” he asked. That was the more pressing concern right now.

Marv smirked a little, then hissed faintly when something hurt. “Nah. I convinced him I’m harmless. I even let him _think_ he got away with the demon tablet, but I pawned a fake off on him, ‘cause I’m smarter than he is.”

Something about Castiel pissed Marv the hell off. It wasn’t just that he was a fucking rogue--Marv didn’t use nearly as much venom when talking about Balthazar. John wasn’t getting all the details, and he sure as fuck didn’t appreciate being kept in the dark.

“Why’d he come after you? Is he trying to make a play against Michael?”

“What? Oh, uh, I don’t think so. I don’t think Castiel knows what we’re up to. He just...doesn’t like me. ‘Cause I was backing the other guy.”

“The one who almost stabilized Heaven?”

“Bingo.”

So, angels were just as fucking petty as any other monster. Good to know. “Any way you can evade him?” Because John sure as hell couldn’t stay and babysit him all the time, not and finish retrieving the salt and track down Nick Cross. Especially if the confrontation with Lucifer’s fucking vessel turned violent. Which John was almost looking forward to--not that he’d kill the bastard, not until they had what they fucking needed from him, but he could mete out a little punishment, at least. Nonfatally, of course.

Marv shook his head. “Not really. Not unless I wanna screen myself from all angels everywhere. Including Michael.”

_Fuck._

“And even then,” he continued, “there’s always random coincidence. Which is how he found me this time, I’m pretty sure. He wasn’t looking or anything.”

“So far as you know.”

“So far as I know.”

There wasn’t much of anything else John could do at this point. “I’m gonna head back to that last house, see if the salt’s there.”

Marv nodded. “Okay. Call me when you know, one way or the other.”

“Yeah.” John left the hospital, still more annoyed at the interruption than anything else. But there was also the fact that unfriendly angels were running around, fucking things up for them.

 _Just what we need,_ he thought. _Another thing to go fucking wrong._

He decided to try and see if he could figure out another way to keep Marv off the angelic grid for a while. Once he had the salt, anyway. Priorities.

 _This place had better fucking pan out,_ he thought. Time was short, their enemies were multiplying, and he still had Cross to track down.

He got back into his truck and sped back to the house, hoping it was finally deserted so he could break in and get what he needed.

 


	15. Part 2, Chapter V

**V.**

 

John had lucked out at that last place, while Marv was in the hospital. He’d secured the salt with an almost worrying lack of trouble, left it with the Prophet, and started tracking Cross.

Who was fucking _annoyingly_ hard to find.

The bastard had gone completely off the grid after the Apocalypse. Which made sense, but John couldn’t exactly appreciate it at the moment. When he _did_ find him, it was by pure luck--he was in the background, for a split second, of a news report about a massive five-car pileup in South Dakota.

Once he had that clue to go on, it only took him another week to track him to Sioux Falls. Which was about the last fucking place he’d expected to find him, or wanted to go. Too damn many memories for him there.

Still, the job was the job. He could suck it up and deal. He got to town as quickly as he could, hoping to just get it over with, but it took him another three days to pick up Cross’s actual trail; leading to a warehouse on the edge of town.

He’d seen the burnt-out shell of the junkyard on the way in. That had...it wasn’t like he and Bobby had been on good terms, the last time he’d talked to him. Hell, he hadn’t actually _talked_ to the ornery old bastard when they’d crossed paths, right before he’d died. Sam had been a go-between. It had been easier that way. Because there was no way in hell John was gonna admit Bobby’d been right, and no way in hell Bobby was gonna back down, so they’d just...avoided each other.

So he hadn’t expected it to hit him that hard, seeing the burnt wreck of his ex-friend’s home.

 _He didn’t die in the fire,_ he reminded himself. _He got shot. Marv told you._

Still, despite his best efforts to stay focused, he’d delayed for just a few moments there, remembering everything that had gone right--and wrong--in that damned junkyard over the years. By the time he got to the warehouse, Cross was already inside.

John parked a half-mile away and came up on foot in the back. There was a window there he could use to break in; that would put him on the catwalks. Easiest place to get a clean shot at Cross, at least in theory. He could haul him out the actual doors once he was downed and unlikely to struggle, but coming in from above made it less likely he’d be detected before he’d gotten his shot off. Of course, it also gave him less of a chance to ID whoever Cross was meeting with, but time enough for that later.

He spotted Cross pretty quick, standing by a controlled line of fire, and--

_Damn it._

His view of Cross was mostly blocked by crates--and, yeah, they could be empty, but they could just as easily throw off the trajectory. And he didn’t know how Cross was standing, so he stood a good chance of fucking missing--or, even if he hit the bastard’s leg, like he’d planned, he might nick the femoral artery. Which would mean a dead target, which meant no Grace, which meant no weapon, which meant…

_Fuck._

And the longer he snuck around on these catwalks trying to find a better position, the greater the chance Cross and company would finish saying whatever the fuck they had to say and fuck off to God alone knew where, and he’d lose his fucking shot at this.

All right, new plan. Cross’s head and shoulders were visible. John was more than a good enough shot to avoid hitting anything vital up there, then he could pick off whoever Cross was meeting with and head down to collect his target and bring him back to Marv.

He set up his rifle and counted his breaths, all his old training taking over. It took only a few seconds to get Cross’s closer shoulder in the crosshairs. _Breathe in, breathe out, squeeze._

The rifle kicked back against his shoulder, but he was ready for it. Nick went down in a spurt of blood, and then--

 _Oh,_ fuck.

Even from behind, even ten years on and ten extra inches on his damned hair, John could still recognize Sam. And he sure as fuck wasn’t shooting his damn _kid._

He gathered up his gun and, quick and quiet as he could, started to make his way across the catwalks, out of the warehouse. Soon as he was clear, he’d check in with Marv, and figure out a way to salvage this.

 

 


	16. Part 3: God Is My Strength, Chapter I

**_Part 3: God is My Strength_ **

 

**I.**

 

Sam had no freaking clue where the hell Nick had found the strength or speed or resources to get so far ahead as fast as he had. Adrenaline could only count for so much, right? And Sam hadn’t been _that_ far behind him. Which led to all kinds of ugly thoughts, about whoever had shot him maybe not being alone, or maybe he _was_ somehow important to stopping the Darkness, and _she_ was after him, or maybe--

He shut down those thoughts as ruthlessly as he could. For now, he had to act on the assumption that Nick was still alive, and believe that he could still catch him. Even if, somehow, Nick was no longer in sight; once Sam was out of the warehouse and his eyes had adjusted to the brighter light, he was left depending on the clear and obvious blood trail to track him. Which, on the one hand, was clear and obvious, so he hadn’t lost Nick entirely.

But on the other, a trail this clear meant he was losing a lot of blood.

He set off along the trail at a slow jog, keeping his gun out, just in case. Because, whether or not the sniper had friends, and whether or not someone had grabbed Nick yet, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that someone heard ‘Darkness’ and thought ‘Lightbringer’--or even just ‘Archangel’--and went for what was, at the moment, the next best thing.

 _Again,_ he reminded himself, _morbid thoughts, not helping._

His phone buzzed in his pocket for the third time since he’d cleared the warehouse, and he paused to check it. Nick wouldn’t-- _couldn’t_ get far, and the trail was there, and...he _probably_ wouldn’t bleed to death while Sam was checking what the hell that was.

Three texts from Dean, increasingly frantic. “Sam, come back.” “Sam, get back here, now.” “Sammy, I need you.”

He hesitated for a split second--something serious had gone down with the sniper, obviously, but Dean hadn’t used any of their SOS code words. Which could mean a lot of things, but if Dean was pushing this hard, knowing what Sam was in the middle of, he couldn’t ignore it. At least the way those messages were phrased meant Dean wasn’t in any actual, immediate danger. He had time to try and get someone else to find Nick.

Jody. Jody would be a good choice. They were right at the edge of Sioux Falls, and she would know how to handle things. Maybe not the skittish-ex-vessel part, but everything else.

But Jody’s phone went straight to voicemail.

_Fuck._

Okay. Second choice--Claire was hopefully still in the area, and maybe didn’t know how to handle a shooting as well as Jody, but _she_ might actually know how to deal with a skittish ex-vessel. Since she sort of was one herself. Well, an ex-vessel, anyway. ‘Skittish’ was probably one of the _last_ words he’d pick to describe her.

Finally, he had a little bit of luck; Claire picked up on the second ring. “Yeah?”

“Uh, hi, Claire, it’s Sam. Sam Winchester.”

A brief silence. “What’s going on?”

He cast around in his head for the best way to describe the problem, without mentioning Lucifer and probably having her flip out at him as a result. “Um. I really hate to drag you into this, but someone I was working with got...he got shot, and he panicked and bolted, and I have to--I have to help Dean, and...he’s not dangerous, I promise. I just...I need someone to find him before he bleeds out.”

“Yeah, okay. Where are you?”

“Thank you,” he said. “I owe you one, big time. I’ll text you the address?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll text you back when I find him.”

“Thanks,” he said, then hung up, sent her the address, and bolted back into the warehouse.

He slowed at the entrance, and very carefully pushed open the door. “Dean?” he called softly, his voice echoing a little. Which may have been a bad choice, since this _could_ have been a trap--but they had codewords for that, too, and Dean hadn’t used one of _them,_ either, so he decided it was probably better to risk it. He’d find his brother faster that way.

It took a few seconds for his eyes to readjust; the only light came from the holy fire, still burning in the corner.

“Freaking took you long enough.” Dean’s voice was tight, strained, but didn’t sound like he was hurt. Sam relaxed a little.

“Had to call for backup.”

“Jody?”

“Claire.” Even if he couldn’t see his brother yet, he could practically _feel_ Dean’s incredulous look. “Jody didn’t pick up.”

“Fine. Whatever. Just...just get up here.”

He was already at the ladder, and started climbing. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just...you need to see this, and tell me I’m not crazy. I mean, _I’m_ seeing it, and I don’t really believe it, and…”

Sam picked up his pace. If Dean was this thrown by whatever it was…

Once he got up there, he could see a faint, cold light from Dean’s phone, on another catwalk, perpendicular to the first. He picked his way over there. “Dean, what--”

He froze.

However dim the light from Dean’s phone was, it was enough that their father’s face was clearly identifiable.

“ _....what?_ ”

“So, you see him, too?” Dean said, visibly relieved.

Sam nodded, his left palm itching in a way it hadn’t in years. He resisted the urge to squeeze it. “What...how...is it...is it really…?”

Dean nodded, once, quick and jerky. “I checked everything I could think of. Salt, holy water, iron, silver--hell, we even still have some freaking Borax in the trunk--”

“What the hell does Borax have to do with anything?”

The two of them both jumped, and Dean took half a step towards Sam before turning around.

Dad--or whatever was pretending to be Dad this time--slowly sat up, not taking his eyes off them.

“Leviathan,” Dean said, after several seconds of silence. “Monsters out of Purgatory. They possess people, but once they’re in a body they can shapeshift, long as they have a DNA sample. Borax’ll slow them down. Cut the head off and separate it from the body.” Like he was rattling off an old lesson, from when they were kids.

Sam fidgeted with his scar and said nothing. Between seeing and hearing Nick and talking about Leviathan again and freaking _Dad,_ back from the dead…

Nothing wavered, everything stayed exactly the same. This was real. Somehow, this whole day was _real._

Dad nodded once, then looked over at Sam. “Where’s Cross?”

 _Cross?_ He realized, with a jolt, that he’d never learned Nick’s full name. That he knew next to nothing about this guy, whose life he’d completely destroyed.

“You let him get away?”

The criticism there--or, more accurately, the way it pissed him off--jerked Sam out of his fog. All those years, all the experience he’d gained since...Dad could still get under his skin. He’d be sort of impressed, or maybe amused in a weird ironic way, if he wasn’t so tense already.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a pleading look from Dean, but he _had_ gotten better at not freaking engaging. Or at least he hoped he had. He was going to damn well try, anyway.

He took a deep breath, and answered as evenly as he could. “Someone we’ve worked with before is on it,” he said. “She’s probably got more experience with angels than anyone except the two of us.” Not exactly a lie, assuming he was only counting their living human contacts. And he couldn’t exactly call Claire a friend, so ‘someone we’ve worked with before’ was the best he could do.

 _Really wish Jody had picked up the damn phone._ Not that he didn’t think Claire could handle herself, but he’d feel a lot more comfortable if someone they had trusted for years, who both liked and trusted _them,_ was in play instead.

“I need him alive,” was all Dad said.

“Shooting him seems like a really good way to make that happen,” Sam muttered, before he could stop himself.

Dad glared at him. “I didn’t hit anything vital. Just hope your friend finds him before he bleeds out.”

 _Deep breath. Don’t engage. You are a grown-ass adult, and you and Dean have done_ just fine _without him._ Most of the time, anyway. “She will,” he said, as calmly as he could manage.

“What do you need him for, anyway?” Dean asked, probably hoping to defuse the confrontation before it turned into another actual fight.

Dad didn’t answer right away, and Sam could see the wheels turning in his father’s head, trying to decide how much intel his sons deserved to get now. “He has access to a weapon I need,” he finally said. “Why were you two meeting with him?”

 _Oh, boy._ Sam and Dean exchanged a long look. On the one hand, every instinct he had-- _still_ \--was telling him to read Dad in, pool resources, figure out why the hell Nick was important, what their visions and/or nightmares meant. As messed up as this whole freaking situation was, as much baggage as he’d had to unpack today, telling Dad everything was _still_ his gut reaction. Besides, maybe the weapon Dad was after had something to do with the visions. Or something.

On the other hand, Sam didn’t exactly want to get locked up in the bunker’s dungeon--or have to lock Nick up, either--which he figured was exactly what Dad would do when he found out he was having freaky Hell visions again. Let alone how he’d react when told what they were probably going to have to do. At least Dean hadn’t gone locked him down like that. Yet.

But, more importantly--and what was probably Dean’s biggest hesitation--they had no idea how Dad had come back, or who (or what) he was working with now. Not that Dad had ever really played well with others, but whatever answered that first question might answer the second.

Besides, they had _years_ of experience, dealing with angels--and Archangels--that Dad just flat _didn’t._ The only time he’d even met one of them, Michael had erased the whole thing. Well, unless he’d run into Gabriel as Loki somewhere along the line, but that wouldn’t exactly give him knowledge or experience with _angels._

It was a very, _very_ uncomfortable feeling, realizing that he and Dean knew _more_ than their dad did.

Dean looked away first. It was probably better for him to try and explain things anyway. Dad would probably be _looking_ for signs of lying or omission from Sam. He’d never dream to think Dean would do the same thing.

“He’s got intel we don’t,” Dean temporized. “Apparently, when someone gets possessed, stuff bleeds through, or at least that’s what...Sam was told a couple years back.”

 _Right. Mentioning Crowley to Dad would be a_ bad _idea._

Before any of them could elaborate or ask for any more details, Sam’s phone buzzed. He checked--quick text from Claire, _We’ve got him._

_We?_

Huh. Jody or Alex must have been with her when she took the call. Alex was more likely; Jody would’ve probably gotten Claire to put it on speaker if she’d heard who she was talking to.

“Claire’s got him,” he said.

“Cross?” Dad asked.

He nodded, almost absently, more focused on his phone. _Where?_ A few seconds later, Claire texted an address, and he sent back a quick _Thanks_ and put his phone away.

“They’re a couple blocks from here,” he said.

“What are we waiting for, then?” Dad pushed himself up off the ground and turned around for Dean to cut him free.

Dean did so, silently, and then fell into step behind Sam, who led the way out of the warehouse after Nick and Claire.

 


	17. Part 3, Chapter II

**II.**

 

Jody hadn’t expected Nick to call and check in yet. She had a feeling his meeting with the boys was the kind of conversation that would take a very, very long time, even if _none_ of them were jittery around each other. She knew for a fact how terrified Nick was, and she had a feeling Sam was about the same.

So, for Nick to call _now,_ less than half an hour after he was supposed to meet them…

Something had gone wrong.

The silence when she answered--other than Nick breathing, a little labored--only confirmed it.

“Nick? Nick, are you there?”

“Y-yeah,” he said. He sounded strained, maybe hurt.

_Oh, God._

Sam and Dean wouldn’t have done that. She’d stake her life on it, no matter what their knee-jerk reaction was in the first instant when they saw his face. No matter what Nick remembered, or feared. Which meant someone _else_ had found their meeting, which could mean…

_Don’t jump to conclusions. Focus on the problem at hand. One step at a time, Jody, come on, you can do this._

“What happened?” she asked, trying to brace herself for the worst and knowing it wouldn’t do her a shred of good when the blow actually came.

“I got...I got sh-shot,” he said.

 _Oh, God._ “Okay. Okay, how bad--” No, don’t ask him how bad it was; he might not be able to tell. “Where are you? I’ll come get you.”

“I don’t...uh, I s-started at...at th-the warehouse on Sixth, b-but I ran…”

Okay. He couldn’t have gotten far, not if he’d been shot--adrenaline could only count for so much especially if he was _bleeding._ “Was anyone else hurt?” she asked, because if the boys were down, too--

“I don’t...I d-don’t know, I don’t...I r-ran, but I didn’t h-hear any other shots.”

That was good. Probably. Hopefully. _Focus. One step at a time. Start by getting to him, getting him_ safe, _then check in on the boys._

“Jody,” he said, interrupting her train of thought. “Jody, I...I c-can’t feel my fingers.”

Her heart sank. “Okay. That’s bad, Nick, I’m not gonna lie to you. But it’s not--can you move your other hand?”

“I...y-yes, I think so.”

“So it’s...it’s bad, but it’s not...it’s not what you’re afraid of, okay? You still control your body, okay? Remember that.”

“There’s...th-there’s a lot of blood,” he said. His voice sounded fainter, oh, God.

“Keep pressure on it. And stay on the phone with me, okay? I can track the call, you just...you just gotta stay with me, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m cold.”

“I know, honey, I know,” she said, dragging out her laptop and pulling up the right software--thank God she’d brought her work computer home to catch up on some paperwork, otherwise, they’d have been even _more_ screwed. “But it’s just...it’s just the blood, okay? You’re still you. And you’re--you will be safe as soon as I get to you, you just have to keep talking. Promise me you’ll keep talking.”

He didn’t answer. He was still breathing, she could still hear him breathing, but he didn’t answer.

“Nick?”

“M’here,” he said.

“Keep pressing, honey, okay? And keep talking. And talk to me. Talk about anything. You gotta keep talking, okay?” She plugged in Nick’s number and waited what felt like forever while it locked on to the signal.

“‘Kay,” he said, but didn’t follow that up with anything.

She was losing him, he was going into shock, or passing out. “Nick, talk. What color is the sky, can you tell?”

“Um.” A heart-stopping pause. “G-grey. S’grey.”

“Okay. Good. Any clouds?” Come on, laptop, come on, give me something…

“No.”

“What about birds? Can you see any birds?”

“Birds? Why...why would I look for birds?”

“Because it’s something to look for. Something to keep you awake.” _And it was all I could think of._ “Please, humor me?”

“I don’t…d-don’t see any...” He trailed off.

“Nick?”

He didn’t answer.

 _Oh, God, please, no._ “Nick, are you still there? Nick, answer me!” The sixty seconds it took to trace a goddamn call had never felt so long.

“Someone’s coming,” he said.

For a second, she was relieved--he was talking to her, he was still conscious, he was still alive--but then the actual words sank in.

And then the line went dead.

“Nick!”

Before she could redial, the tracker finally did it’s freaking job and gave her coordinates.

“Jody?” Claire asked, hovering in the doorway.

“Not now, Claire,” she said, _just_ this side of snapping.

“Jody, Sam just called me,” Claire said. “He said someone got shot, and that they were in trouble. Isn’t that where Nick went? To meet the Winchesters?”

It took a split second for that to penetrate. “Yeah,” she said. “What did he tell you?” Without waiting for Claire to answer, she started for her car--Nick was hurt, there was someone completely unknown with him, and-- _at least Sam’s okay, he was okay enough to think to call Claire._

“Not much. He texted me an address, but said he was following a trail. He said he had to go help Dean, but he didn’t say why.” Claire collected her sword on the way out.

Jody didn’t bother stopping her. “Text Alex,” she said, getting the car started and trying not to think of how badly Dean might need help.

_...fuck it. If this ain’t exigent circumstances, nothing is._

She flipped on her lights and sirens and got moving as soon as Claire was buckled in.

 

 


	18. Part 3, Chapter III

**III.**

 

When Claire and Jody got to where Nick had made the call, he was still there.

_Oh, thank God._

Jody almost relaxed at that, except she couldn’t tell much else on the approach, not even if he was…

_No. He’s not dead. He’s not allowed to be dead._

She took a deep breath and focused as best she could, trying to assess the scene like it was any other, like it was someone else’s boyfriend bleeding all over an alley.

He’d been hit in his right shoulder; most of the blood was on that side. Okay. That wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. Explained how he’d been mobile for a while, and a good chance it wouldn’t be fatal.

Except there was a _lot_ of blood.

And, just as he’d warned, he wasn’t alone--which, in all honesty, if he was hurt bad, was probably for the best. Except that he wasn’t with either of the boys. Jody didn’t recognize the girl with him at all. She was maybe twenty-five, with dark hair in a single braid down her back. She hadn’t turned when they’d approached. And Nick had frozen and then hung up on Jody when the girl--probably the girl--had turned up, which probably meant Bad Things.

On the other hand, she had Nick propped up against a wall and it looked like she was trying to control the bleeding. And Nick _did_ have a tendency to jump at shadows. He may have panicked at even a friendly stranger, especially since he was already pretty damn anxious when the girl showed up.

Still, better safe than sorry. She got her gun out--not that it would do much good against a monster. “Anyone you know?” Jody asked Claire, nodding at the stranger as they spilled out of the car and made their way over.

Claire shook her head, ready with her sword.

_Of course not. That would be too easy._

The stranger didn’t look up right away when they approached, keeping all her focus on the task at hand, but she clearly knew they were there; she must’ve heard the sirens.

“Thank God, you’re here.” She had a faint British accent, and kept her hands, holding what looked like a piece torn off her shirt, pressed into Nick’s shoulder. “I think the bullet’s still in there, but I’ve got the bleeding under control.” She looked up at last, and something Jody couldn’t quite read flickered in her eyes. “Oh. Police, not ambulance. Too much to hope for, I suppose. Were the shots reported, or…?”

“Something like that,” Jody said, slipping into cop mode as best she could when her boyfriend was maybe bleeding to death and Claire was at her back instead of a deputy. _Act like this is any other scene, and Jane Doe over there won’t react to the sword. Act like this is any other scene, and Claire won’t pick up on how freaked you are and fly off the handle. Act like this is any other scene, and maybe you’ll start to actually feel like it is._ Detached was better. There was a reason they didn’t let doctors treat their relatives, and Jody had to try and apply the same principle here. “What happened here?”

“I’m not entirely certain,” she said. “I saw...my phone was out of charge or I’d’ve called 911, of course. But I saw him bleeding there, and I couldn’t _not_ help--I’m a nurse--but I…I think I frightened him, he tried to get up, and then he passed out.”

Jody exchanged a glance with Claire, who shrugged. It was plausible, sure. And it explained why their call had gotten cut off; if he’d tried to get up and run and dropped his phone. Still, it was _only_ plausible, and there wasn’t much of a way to tell whether or not the nurse was lying. So she kept her gun out, and Claire’s sword was still ready. “What’s your name?”

“Lucy,” she said. “Lucy Dade.”

Jody nodded, then considered for a couple seconds.

Claire came closer, and said, “I can keep an eye on her.”

Which would leave Jody free to go back up the boys, or track down the shooter. _Or both,_ she thought. _Both is good._ And when she _caught_ the shooter, they would have words. And possibly bullets.

She took a deep breath, and tried to let her rage out along with it. _Focus. Don’t get carried away. You’re better than this._ “All right. Claire, call for help. I’m gonna see if I can find the shooter.”

“A good plan,” Lucy said. “Claire, is it? I could use your help once you’re off the phone.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Jody watched Claire pick her way over to the nurse, hesitating for another half-second, then steeled herself, turned, and started tracing Nick’s path back to the warehouse.

 

 


	19. Part 3, Chapter IV

**IV.**

 

Sam, Dean, and Dad had just reached the bottom of the catwalk ladder when the door to the warehouse creaked open. The three of them shifted to meet the threat right away, Dad in front and Sam and Dean behind him, ready to cover or flank whoever it was.

“Sam?” a familiar voice called. “Dean? You boys in here?”

Sam felt at least a third of the tension he was carrying bleed out. _Jody. Thank God._

Dean reached out and touched Dad’s shoulder. “Local sherriff. Friend of ours, knows the deal.”

Dad nodded, and lowered his gun.

“Yeah, we’re here,” Sam called back. “I guess Claire told you what was going on?”

Jody, silhouetted against the fire, picked her way over to them. “Yeah,” she said, after a beat.

“You and Claire found Cross?” Dad interrupted.

She turned and blinked at him. “I feel like I know you from somewhere.”

“Uh, it’s...kind of hard to explain,” Dean said. “But, um, this is our dad. Dad, this is Jody Mills.”

The two of them sized each other up for a moment, and Sam got the distinct impression that neither of them was sure they liked what they saw. Still, they were at least civil on the surface, shaking hands briefly.

“Claire’s with him,” Jody said, answering Dad’s original question. “Along with a nurse--a Good Samaritan who saw him bleeding on the sidewalk. You guys get the shooter?”

“Uh, sort of,” Dean said. “It was actually Dad. He thought Nick was more of a threat than he actually is, but we’ve--”

Before any of them could move--or, hell, even process what the fuck was going on--Jody hauled back and slugged Dad in the face, hard enough that there was an audible _snap_ as his nose broke.

“Fuck!”

Sam and Dean moved a split second later to pull them apart before anyone else could get hurt; Dean went to Dad and Sam dragged Jody a few paces back.

“Hey, hey, hey, calm down,” he tried.

“Relax, Sam, I’m done,” she said. Her eyes were bright and she was still tense, still breathing hard, but she wasn’t resisting him. “He could have killed him. He almost _did._ ”

 _Shit._ “Is he...I mean, is he gonna be okay?” Above and beyond not wanting to ruin Nick’s life _again,_ Dean had been right about one thing, for sure--Nick was involved, Nick was important. Hell, maybe _Nick_ was actually where the visions had been pointing him, and the Cage was just a really vague, roundabout way of getting there.

_God helps those who help themselves._

That was what the creepy dream version of Dad had told him. Though it would _really_ have helped if he knew what the fuck that was supposed to mean. Other than, maybe, the solution to their problem was entirely in human hands.

“He’s--he lost a lot of blood, but…” She took a deep breath. “We found him in time. He’s...he’ll be...he says he...he told me can’t feel that hand, but…” She shook her head. “No. I’m not going down that road. He’s gonna be fine.”

“Okay,” Sam said.

“You can let go of me, Sam,” she said. “I’m not gonna punch your dad again.”

“Oh. Right. Uh. Sorry.” He let go and backed off.

“Thanks,” she said, and sighed.

“Dean, we good?” Sam called. He had no idea what he and Dad had been talking about. Hopefully, Dean had managed to defuse that end of the confrontation, too, before it devolved into an actual, physical fight.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “No one’s gonna punch anyone else, all right?”

Beside him, Sam felt Jody relax imperceptibly. Obviously she didn’t regret slugging Dad--and, in her defense, Nick was an innocent person getting shot at in her town. Besides, it almost seemed like she _knew_ Nick, and if that was true, he couldn’t really blame her for punching the guy that shot him. Hell, _he_ might have, if it had been anyone else. Dean had even knocked Dad out for it before realizing who he was. And the two of them only had second-hand history with Nick, and it was...bad.

Although, there _was_ one thing that was sort of weird. Everything she’d said, and all her body language, pointed to her and Nick being close. But she’d never even mentioned _meeting_ him to Sam or Dean. He wasn’t sure exactly how to feel about that.

Either way, whether or not she regretted punching Dad in the face, it looked to Sam like she had been worried it might cause problems with him and Dean.

“Why don’t we all go back to where you left Claire and Nick?” Sam said. “We can figure out what to do from there.”

Jody eyed Dad again, then said, “Fine.”

“And we all promise not to shoot or punch anyone else,” Dean added. “Right?”

Dad looked annoyed, but nodded once.

“Fine,” Jody said again, then turned on her heel and stalked out of the warehouse.

Dad followed after her, just as obviously pissed, and Sam met Dean’s eyes over Dad’s head.

This day just kept getting more and more bizarre and out of control, and they both knew it.

Sam sighed, shrugged once, and started after Dad and Jody. Hopefully, between him and Dean, they could at least defuse any more fighting before anyone _else_ got hurt.

 

 


	20. Part 3, Chapter V

**V.**

 

The four of them made good time back to where Jody had left Nick; moving quickly in an increasingly uncomfortable silence. But at least no one else got violent. That was something.

They got there just in time to see the ambulance leave.

“Damn it,” Dad muttered, and Dean decided not to respond. The others, apparently, followed his cue; neither Sam nor Jody replied, either.

Claire was waiting for them, sitting on the hood of Jody’s truck, bloody to her elbows. Next to her was a dark-haired girl he assumed was Jody’s Good Samaritan nurse on first glance.

But a second look…

_Oh, fuck._

Fucking _Lucy._

The fucking crossroads demon who had gotten them in touch with Nick in the first place.

_Fuck._

Dean exchanged a long look with Sam, then shook his head slightly.

Sam’s jaw tightened a little, but he nodded. They did not need another fight right now.

“We put Nick in the ambulance,” Claire was telling Jody. “They wouldn’t let us ride with him.”

Jody nodded. “How is he?”

Lucy hesitated. “Not great. He lost a lot of blood. But they should be able to patch him up fairly quickly.”

Jody nodded, a little pale, then turned back to Sam and Dean. “I’m gonna head to the hospital. I can...once he’s released, I can bring him to meet you, finish what you guys started. Assuming he still wants to talk.”

 _...huh._ Dean got the feeling Jody knew Nick a hell of a lot better than she was letting on. _Wonder when_ that _happened._

“Good idea,” Sam said. “Uh, I can’t give you an exact address, but we’re in Lebanon, Kansas. Give us a call when you get close, and we can give you directions.

Jody nodded. “Yeah, will do. Claire, you coming?”

“Yeah.”

She turned to Lucy. “Thank you,” she said. “For helping.”

“Don’t mention it,” the demon said, with a surprisingly sincere-looking smile.

Jody and Claire piled into the truck and got going, and Dad was grilling Sam about the whole ‘can’t give an exact address’ thing, which left Dean free to corner Lucy.

_Excellent._

Dean took her arm and dragged her a little further down the alley, just to make sure they were out of Dad’s earshot.

“You,” he said, under his breath, “are _not_ a nurse.”

She smiled lazily up at him. “Well, no, I’m not. Technically. But this body is, at least. And I kept your asset from bleeding to death. Why are you complaining?”

He decided not to give the freaking obvious answer there. Instead, he asked, “What do you want, Lucy?”

“That needn’t concern you,” she said, with a shrug. “We’ve already made our bargain, haven’t we?”

And that bargain, and what he and Sam had done with the information they bought, may or may not have been what exposed Nick enough for Dad to find him.

“You’re screwing with my friend,” he said, because that was the more important part.

“Your sheriff, you mean?” She shook her head. “I’m not. Well, I _am,_ of course--I am what I am, after all--but that’s not why I stopped to help him.”

“Why, then?”

Lucy tilted her head, as if considering how much to tell him.

“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Look, I’m hedging my bets, all right? You have _no idea_ how valuable Nick is, do you?”

“The hell do you mean?” Dad wouldn’t explain what the hell was going on. Maybe he and Sam would have better luck with Lucy. Hell, even if she wouldn’t answer his questions, Dean had a lot more ways to make her talk than he would or could use on Dad.

“Well, technically, it’s not _him_ that’s valuable, but what he’s carrying.”

“What he’s--he _does_ have memories. About the Darkness.” Great. Sam wasn’t gonna be happy about that.

She shrugged fluidly. “Possibly? But I was referring to something much more tangible.” She smiled. “He is the rather piss-poor guardian of a fragment of Lucifer’s Grace.”

Oh. Right. That.

 _Sam’s gonna be even_ less _happy about_ that.

“Fuck.”

“Whatever memories he might have--assuming they’re at all relevant anymore--that little fragment is, at present, the most valuable substance on Earth.”

“Because of the Darkness.”

“Primarily, yes.” She sighed. “And the Grace can’t be retrieved if he dies. Ergo, I must keep him alive if I’m to acquire it. Though there _are_ more potential uses for it than you might think, even if the Darkness weren’t a factor. She just...drove up the price, so to speak. Increased the demand.”

And since the only way to increase the supply would be to let Lucifer out again…

Yeah, okay. That made sense.

“You can’t have him,” he said. “We need him. To defeat the Darkness.” And that freaking itchy brain feeling again, goddammit, he wished it would stop. Freaking bond.

Not that they actually knew _how_ they were supposed to use Nick--or the Grace fragment inside him--to defeat the Darkness, just that they needed him. Well, Dean had a feeling Dad had a clue, but he wasn’t freaking talking about it. At least not yet.

_God. I don’t remember this whole ‘need-to-know’ thing he pulls being this freaking annoying before._

Lucy was rolling her eyes again. “I’m aware,” she said. “Believe me, I know damn well the Darkness is bad news for everyone, my kind included. I’m not an idiot.”

“Then what’s your game?”

She considered. “Well. That would be the question, wouldn’t it.”

“You plan on giving me an answer?”

She smiled at him, sharklike. “Let’s just say that, where one valuable item lies, others are frequently found close at hand. I stay by Nick, I profit. Even if you and your brother use him up fixing what you broke.”

“So you actually want to tag along with us.” She was up to something. He _knew_ she was. He just couldn’t fucking figure out what.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll behave. I’ll even let you chain me up, though I’d prefer to avoid your legendary dungeon. I’ll be the best-behaved little demon on a leash you can possibly imagine.”

 _Yeah,_ that’s _gonna end well._

“And,” she continued, “I can continue to play Nurse Innocent, and let you choose the time and place for all the awkward conversations you need to have with Dead Man Walking over there.” She nodded in Dad’s general direction.

“Watch it,” he snapped, bristling.

She held up her hands. “I’ve offended you. I apologize. So?”

“What?”

“Am I coming or not?”

He hesitated for a second. On the one hand, having a demon around--even one on a leash, even one who had promised to behave--was just _asking_ for trouble. They’d been dealing with Crowley long enough to know that.

On the other, letting her wander off on her own was an even _worse_ plan.

“Fine,” he said. “Unless Sam vetoes, you’re coming with us.”

She grinned up at him. “You won’t regret it.”

He glowered back. “I already do.”

 


	21. Part 3, Chapter VI

**VI.**

 

Jody had gone to join Claire and Nick at the ER to see how bad Dad had fucked up his arm, but was planning to meet them at the bunker as soon as they could. Or, at least, Jody and Nick were hopefully going to join them. Claire might end up staying back in Sioux Falls with Alex.

Assuming Nick didn’t tell them to go fuck themselves, and Sam honestly wouldn’t blame him if he did.

Lucy was coming to the bunker with them, which was gonna be a fucking _delight_ to explain to Dad. But Dean thought, and Sam agreed, that if the alternative was letting her wander off to do God knows what, they would take the awkward conversation.

He and Dean had driven back, with her in the backseat and Dad following. Dean took her and Dad inside, which meant _he_ drew the ‘explain shit’ short straw. That left Sam free to start trying to dig into what the fuck was going on.

As soon as Sam was sure Dean and the others were safely inside and out of earshot, he called Cas.

The angel answered right away. “Sam, what do you need?”

“Uh.” _Fuck, where to start. I’m working with Nick, who got shot, by my freaking_ dad _who, by the way, is alive again, was that your people?_ Except, from all he’d heard, Heaven really _wasn’t_ Cas’s people anymore. He might not even know if the angels had been involved.

But he’d probably know which trees to shake to find out.

Apparently, that one, half-stuttered syllable had been enough to raise his friend’s concerns. “Sam, what’s wrong?”

He shook himself. “I’m...uh, it’s complicated. There’s a lot to go over, but the big thing is--Dad’s back.”

Cas was silent for a few seconds. “As a ghost?”

“No. Uh, in the flesh. And _his_ flesh, and he’s the only one in there, far as we can tell. We tested him six ways to Sunday, and it’s...it all looks real.”

He let out a short breath. “That is...concerning.”

“I don’t suppose you heard anything about it?” Sam asked, sitting on the steps outside the bunker. “On Angel Radio, or anything?”

“No. There hasn’t been any chatter about John Winchester since...well, since Anna tried to kill him.” Sam could practically hear Cas frowning. “Of course, that doesn’t entirely rule out an angel, either acting on their own or as part of a conspiracy. It is possible to transmit lies along Angel Radio, and even more possible to find alternative means of communication and keep--well, radio silence, for lack of a better term.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of,” Sam said. “So, we’ve got nothing, on how…”

“Sam?”

_I made a...potentially unwise deal, a couple months back._

“There might be a demon involved,” he said slowly, then filled Cas in on everything that had gone down with Lucy. “I mean, it’s thin, but…”

“Resurrecting John Winchester would certainly alarm a number of people. Including, if my understanding of his temperament is correct, the man himself.”

He winced, picturing how Dad would react to being resurrected by a demon deal. Especially when they had no idea who had _made_ it. “Yeah, no kidding.”

“I understand you have this demon in your custody now?”

“For now, yeah,” he said. “I’ll run that angle by Dean. Maybe we can get something out of her. If she was involved.”

“A good plan,” he agreed. “I’ll see what I can find on the Heavenly end of the spectrum. Are you planning to involve Crowley?”

“Uh.” That was the question, wasn’t it. “Not until we know how Lucy fits in, I don’t think,” he finally said.

“All right. I’ll call you as soon as I have anything.”

“Yeah, thanks. We’ll do the same.”

He hung up, then closed his eyes, letting out a sigh and pressing his phone into his forehead. _What a fucking mess. And I didn’t even get to Nick because--fuck, how the hell am I supposed to_ talk _about him? Seeing him again was...it’s hard to be scared of him, because I_ know _he’s not Lucifer, not anymore, and I can_ see _the wreck that was made of him. And I know it’s my fault, it’s always been my fault, so there’s the guilt there, too. But at the same time...at the same time, it’s hard to_ not _be scared of him, because that_ face…

“Sammy?”

He jumped a little, then turned to face Dean. “Hey.”

“You all right?”

“Getting there,” he said. “So, uh, you were right about Nick.”

Dean nodded, and, much to Sam’s relief, refrained from saying ‘I told you so.’ “You had any more visions?”

Sam shook his head. “Not since we decided to reach out to him. But...I don’t know, they didn’t exactly come on a regular schedule.” He shifted uneasily.

“Yeah.” Dean sighed. “What about Cas, he got anything?”

He shook his head again. “No chatter on Angel Radio, but he said that doesn’t mean much. He’ll look into it.”

“Good. You know, I was thinking, about what Lucy told us back when we met. About her deal.”

 _Should’ve known._ “Yeah, me too. How do you wanna play that out?”

He let out an explosive sigh. “Shit. I don’t know. I don’t know how to handle her and Dad at the same time, without--you know, I’m sort of used to living on a goddamn powder keg, but this…”

“Is a whole new level of explosive?”

“You said it.” He sighed, and rubbed at the back of his neck. “You coming in?”

“Yeah, just give me a minute?”

“All right. Just...don’t take too long. And let me know if you get an ETA from Jody.”

Sam felt a faint stab of guilt. He was leaving Dean alone to juggle their dad, resurrected by as-yet-unknown parties, and the crossroads demon who may or may not have been one of those parties, but was sure as hell after _something…_

He shook it off. “You do the same.”

Dean nodded and headed back inside.

 


	22. Part 3, Chapter VII

**VII.**

 

Much to Dean’s relief, Sam came back into the bunker less than five minutes after Dean had left him on the steps. And not a moment too soon; things inside were tense. _Very_ tense.

True, Lucy was being as cooperative as promised, seamlessly inserting herself into the Men of Letters narrative, highjacking parts of Sam and Dean’s story about a grandparent and a Legacy, claiming she provided research assistance to overburdened hunters, as well as medical help through her day job. She also did a creepily masterful job of implying that the three of them had connected through records he and Sam had found in the files. Which didn’t exactly solve the problem--also, they were _lying,_ to _Dad,_ which felt nine damn kinds of wrong at least--but she was helping to delay the fight until after they’d gotten all the more important issues sorted out.

_Christ. When did hiding a demon in my home stop being an important issue?_

Lucy had--disturbingly amiably--cooperated in being taken out of the main library, with the excuse that she had research of her own to do. She’d even failed to put up a fuss at being trapped.

 _That_ was probably a problem, but she was safely confined for now. She’d balked at being taken down to the dungeon, and Dean had caved for now, because he did not want to deal with a physical fight right then, with all the other crap going on. Besides, the trap he’d painted on the kitchen floor would do just fine in the short term. He could figure out a long-term solution later. _Without_ Dad hovering over his shoulder.

But the important thing was, Sam was back, and now they could start trying to piece together what the fuck was going on.

The three of them sat at one of the library tables, and for a solid minute or two, none of them said anything. Dean kept looking uneasily from Sam to Dad; Sam was carefully looking anywhere but at the others; and Dad was staring at the two of them, level and unreadable. It was like they were all waiting for someone else to break the silence, which couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if it had _tried._

Right when Dean opened his mouth to say something-- _anything_ \--to cut the tension, Dad finally did it for him.

“Why were you two meeting with Cross?”

 _Oh, thank God._ “Because of the Darkness,” Dean answered, then started to explain, but Dad cut him off.

“I know what the Darkness is. Why Cross?”

Sam answered this time. “Because...because the last time, the Darkness was defeated by God and all four Archangels working together. Nick is...he’s basically the closest thing to an Archangel that’s still alive and topside.”

Which was...okay, technically it was _true,_ but that wasn’t why they’d gone after him. On the other hand, the truth involved Sam having freaky fucking Hell visions again, which was _not_ a fight Dean wanted to repeat. Not now, not _ever._

“Why did you shoot him?” Sam asked, before Dad could push him to clarify.

Dad was silent for a second, then said, “I didn’t think he’d come with me otherwise.”

“And you need him to take you to this weapon you’re after?” Dean guessed.

Another brief silence, then Dad shook his head. “No. I need to haul him to the person who can get the weapon out of him.”

 _Just like Lucy said._ But before Dean could do or say anything, he felt Sam tense next to him.

“Lucifer’s Grace,” he said softly. “You want--you’re after Lucifer’s Grace.”

Of course Sam got to it first. Up until that all-too-recent conversation with the demon, Dean had pretty much forgotten that angels left a piece of themselves behind when they abandoned a vessel. Trust Sam to remember those details. Especially when he’d tried to use them in the past.

“I’m after Grace from _all_ the Archangels,” Dad corrected. “We have Michael and Raphael, and apparently you boys have Gabriel. Cross has Lucifer.”

 _...wait, what?_ “ _We_ have Gabriel?” Dean asked.

“First of all, who’s ‘we?’” Sam asked at the same time.

Dad considered a minute, then answered Sam first. “I’m working with a Prophet.”

As one, Dean and Sam looked over to the end of the table, where Kevin had--

Sam clenched his fists and took a deep breath, and Dean jumped in, salvaging the conversation before Dad could poke that too hard.

“Prophet? There are Prophets again?”

“Just the one, as far as I know,” he said. “Why shouldn’t there be?”

 _Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck._ “Uh. Metatron--did something, turned off Prophets, supposedly permanently.”

“I guess the angels figured out how to turn them back on,” Sam said.

“Yeah.”

There was a brief silence, then Sam took a deep breath and went on. “Okay. So...so the Prophet told you where to find all these Grace fragments, how to put them together to make the weapon?”

Dad shook his head. “He knows what they are, but I had to run ‘em down. He said that’s why Michael brought me back.”

 _That_ was ominous. Because if Michael had enough reach outside the Cage to activate and work with a Prophet--and to _bring Dad back_ \--who the hell knew what else he was capable of?

Even worse, what _Lucifer_ was capable of?

Sam had gone white, and Dean was pretty damn sure he could see the same wheels turning in Sam’s head as his own. “Michael...Michael can reach outside the Cage,” Sam said quietly.

“Not much. Not enough to actually _do_ anything, just provide information.”

_And raise the dead._

“Okay,” Dean said. “What makes you think we’ve got Gabriel’s Grace?”

“He gave it to you, didn’t he?” Dad said. “When he told you how to reseal the Cage.”

_Gabriel’s Grace was in that thing? Shit._

Sam frowned. “The...shit. Dean, did you keep that?”

“Uh...I mean, yeah, I did,” Dean said. “Just trying to remember where I stashed it.” He closed his eyes, thinking back. He’d stored a bunch of crap in lockers all over the country that year, keeping only the bare minimum he thought he’d need for self-defense. He’d buried all the rings rather than keeping them handy. He’d dug Death’s up to bargain for Sam’s soul, but the rest should still be where he left them. And he _knew_ he hadn’t tossed the DVD, because you don’t fucking throw out the instructions for something as important as the locks on the Cage. It would have been one of the first things he stashed, too, which meant it was probably in one of the closer lockers…

“Dean?” Sam asked.

“Yeah. Just thinking. Uh, if I’m remembering right, there’s one of two lockers it might be in. We can hit ‘em both in a day, maybe two on the outside.”

“Good,” Dad said. “Then all we have to do is get the Grace from Cross.”

“There’s a way to do that,” Sam said. “Specially designed needle. We have one.”

“What happened to the pieces of Michael and Raphael?” Dean asked. “You got ‘em with you?”

Dad shook his head. Well, that wasn’t all that surprising--Archangel Grace was too damn valuable to carry around all the time. Still, it was worth a shot. “No. Marv put them--”

“ _Marv?_ ” Sam interrupted.

Dean went cold. _No. Oh,_ fuck, _that can’t be right._

But, “Yeah,” Dad said. “Marv. The Prophet.”

_Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuuuuuuuuuck._

While he was trying to figure out how the hell to tell Dad that his ‘Prophet’ was actually, in all probability, a psychotic fallen angel, Sam dug out his phone.

“What the hell is going on, boys?”

“Is this Marv?” Sam asked, showing Dad his phone with that one YouTube video of Metatron raising the dead, back when he’d been top dog in Heaven, right before--

_Right before he killed me._

Dad watched the video, his eyes narrowing. “Yeah.”

 _Shit. Shit shit fuck hell_ shit.

“He’s not a prophet,” Sam said quietly. “And I doubt he’s working with Michael.”

Silver lining, that. The Cage was still intact.

“His real name’s Metatron,” Dean said. “Fucking jackass of a fallen angel.”

“He used to be the Scribe of God,” Sam continued for him. “Until God went AWOL, and the Archangels started taking over. He rabbited around when the civil war between Michael and Lucifer really got going.”

“We dug him up a couple years back,” Dean said. “Found him on this Indian reservation out in New Mexico, back when Sam was doing the Trials.”

“Trials?”

 _Shit._ “Uh. To close the gates of Hell,” Dean said. “We didn’t...uh, we didn’t finish.”

Without waiting for Dad to respond to that, Sam went on. “He gave us the third Trial, then found our friend Cas--Castiel, he’s an angel--and convinced him to do what he thought were another set of Trials, to seal Heaven.”

“Turns out, he was actually casting every single other angel out of Heaven. He declared himself the new God,” Dean said. “Took us a year to bring the bastard down.”

“The angels decided not to execute him,” Sam said. “Cas said something about wanting the bloodshed to end.”

“So, it really has been civil war up there since Michael went down,” Dad interrupted.

“Yeah,” Sam said.

“This--Castiel, this friend of yours,” he said. “He’s the one who killed Raphael, then fucked things up even more?”

Dean winced a little. “Uh. Yeah. In...in Cas’s defense, you know, Raphael was trying to restart the Apocalypse, and Cas had access to...a weapon, only it kind of backfired on him.”

“He got in over his head,” Sam said, fidgeting with his hand. “Which is part of why Metatron was able to get to him, playing on the guilt of...all the ways he messed up the whole Raphael thing.”

“Okay,” Dad said. “But Marv is human. I tested him myself.”

 _Do you even know_ how _to test for an angel, Dad? Do you have an angel blade to cut him with, see if Grace comes out?_ Not that it actually mattered in this case, but-- _fuck_ , this whole situation was _so fucking wrong._

“Yeah, he is. Uh. Sort of. Technically.” Sam hesitated a second. “He was in prison for a while, but he escaped.”

 _After the two of you and Bobby busted him out of jail._ Dean held his peace though. Because going into _that_ would mean having to explain _why_ Sam and Cas had been dumb enough to spring Metatron, which would mean explaining the Mark, and that was _not_ a conversation he wanted to have right now.

“Cas took his Grace first, though, which makes him human in every way that matters,” Sam finished. “Human needs, human weaknesses--but also human innocuousness.”

Dad considered all that for a minute, then nodded. “Fine. What’s he after, then?”

That was the question, wasn’t it.

“Hard to say, with him,” Sam said. He paused for a moment and then grudgingly added, “He might genuinely be trying to axe the Darkness. For self-preservation, if nothing else.”

“Or maybe he’s trying to do what Cas did back when _he_ was human,” Dean suggested. “Only using Archangel Grace ‘cause it’s more powerful, and he doesn’t have to kill any angels to get it. Draws less attention, ‘til he’s ready to move.”

“Maybe,” Sam said doubtfully. “Except I don’t know if he’d run the risk of burning his vessel out like that. Especially since the ones that can handle Archangel power aren’t exactly common.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, making a face. They had Nick’s scars as a recent, vivid reminder of that fact. “But if he’s using it as a stepping stone to find where you and Cas stashed _his_ Grace…”

“Either way,” Dad cut in, “sounds to me like we need to keep him the hell away from Cross, and get the DVD locked down.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “Whatever Metatron wants the Archangel Grace for, if we have half of it, we can lure him out to get the rest.”

“Plus, we still have _his_ Grace, don’t we?” Dean pointed out.

Sam nodded. “Yeah, Cas left it with me.”

“Next question,” Dad said. “If Metatron isn’t working with Michael, and your Castiel took his powers, then who the hell brought me back?”

“We’re working on that,” Sam said. “Cas is trying to find out if any angels were involved.”

“And Lucy’s got sources of her own,” Dean said. “I’ll get her to work on it. Pull her off the, uh, research she came here to do.” Personally, he thought Lucy, or some other demon, being involved was a hell of a lot more likely than the angels. Given that Heaven hated Metatron almost as much as he and Sam did. Still, best to cover all bases, just in case.

Sam glanced over at him, then opened his mouth to say something else, but was cut off when his phone buzzed. “Hang on. Uh. Jody and Nick are on their way.”

Dean relaxed a little. _Good, he still wants to play ball. One less problem to worry about._ So, figuring in driving time, Nick and Jody would get down here before too long, and then they’d have more to go on. “I say we wait to go for the DVD ‘til they get here,” he said. “Make sure we’re still here to let ‘em in when they show up.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. I’ll try Cas, see if he found out anything yet. Then I’ll go through the library again.”

Dean nodded. They’d combed through what they thought was everything for answers on the Darkness, but that was before they had any kind of actual lead. Now that they knew they were starting from Archangel Grace, they might have a little more luck. Metatron probably knew, of course, but it wasn’t exactly a good idea to act on his intel without some kind of corroboration. “Dad, maybe you and I should get started on that?”

Dad considered a minute, then nodded. “All right.”

Relieved that they hadn’t had to fight him on that, Dean stood up. “I’ll check with Lucy, then join you.”

Sam went back to his phone, and Dad headed for the shelves.

 _So far so good,_ Dean told himself, hoping things held together for just a little bit longer.

 


	23. Part 3, Chapter VIII

**VIII.**

 

Nick and Jody turned up right on time, late that night. Dad was still in the library, and Lucy had let them move her from the kitchen to one of the bedrooms, where he was less likely to stumble across her and ask awkward questions.

She wouldn’t give a straight answer about Dad’s resurrection, which made Sam think she _had_ been involved, and was worried Sam and Dean would renege on the deal if things got messy.

Still, things were holding steady for now, and he and Dean had tacitly decided not to push just yet. Not until they knew more, not until the other minor catastrophes had been dealt with. Lucy’s real identity, and what she had probably done, were the some of the biggest issues that might screw them over when they actually went for Amara. They needed all their attention on resolving it when the time came.

Nick was still pretty out of it, between the blood loss and the drugs they’d given him in the ER, so they got him set up in one of the other unused bedrooms. And then they had a chance to talk with Jody privately in the kitchen, and answer some of the questions they had there.

Sam started them off. “So, uh, you seem to know Nick pretty well,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Look, I’ve been trying to convince him to get in touch with you for months. But he’s been…”

“Scared?” he guessed. And he didn’t blame him, at all. It had taken one hell of a crisis to make _him_ willing to be in the same room as Nick again, and Nick was maybe even less able to defend himself against whatever might have come from it.

As it was, the meeting had gone pretty much as well as it possibly could, at least up until Dad got involved. They were _incredibly_ lucky for that decent start. And that Nick hadn’t told them to go fuck themselves after he’d gotten shot, though Sam had a feeling Jody had a lot to do with that.

“Yeah.”

“How do you two even know each other?” Dean asked. “I mean, we pretty much thought he was dead until…”

 _Until we were desperate enough to need him to_ not _be dead,_ Sam finished for him. Which wasn’t exactly true--or, at least, it didn’t quite line up with what Dean had told him before--but it was close enough for now.

“We met a couple years ago, that year both of you were out of contact, right after...after Bobby died,” Jody told them.

Sam felt a sharp stab of guilt deep in his gut. _Meaning when Dean was in Purgatory and I was AWOL._ He shook it off as best he could, trying to pay attention to what Jody was saying.

“There was a monster stalking a grief group. Oizys, Greek goddess of misery. We killed her together.” She looked away. “Oizys would...she would shapeshift, wear the face of someone associated with her victim’s worst memory, then rip their hearts out. Swallowing their misery to give them...give them peace.”

 _Shit._ That would have been awful for Jody. If Oizys had come after her, disguised as her son…

She cleared her throat and looked up at them. “Anyway, at first, I thought Nick was the monster--or maybe a hunter on its trail--but Oizys tried for him when I was checking him out. Turns out, the reason he was pinging all my radars was he’d been on the run since he’d been possessed. Or, at least, since the demon who’d kidnapped him after got sloppy and he was able to get away.”

Well, that explained _that,_ anyway. One less question to bother Nick with, when he woke up.

“Anyway,” Jody continued, “we worked out what she was together, and took her down.” She smiled softly at the memory. “We kept in touch after that, got pretty close over the years.”

“And you know who…” Sam trailed off.

“Yeah,” she confirmed. “I mean, not right away, but about a year, year and a half ago? A couple months after I adopted Alex.”

Which probably explained why she hadn’t told them then--they’d been dealing with their own problems, with the Mark and Dean being a demon, and everything.

“He doesn’t remember a whole heck of a lot,” Jody went on. “I actually think I know more about his possession than _he_ does, but…”

Sam frowned. “Wait, if he didn’t tell you, then how…?”

“There’s these books--”

Sam groaned and put his face in his hands.

Dean swore. “Seriously? Those are still out there?”

“Yeah.” She started to say something else, then stopped, and veered off onto a tangent. “But...that’s why I’ve been trying to get him to make contact. Or part of it, anyway. I mean, I’m not plugged in, intel wise, the way you boys are, but...something happened, last summer.”

“To Nick?” Sam asked.

She nodded. “We were together, talking and--it got cold, and his eyes went blank and he had--he had some kind of seizure or something? His neck...his neck started glowing.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. That was probably right around when the Darkness had been sent free. And the throat was where Grace sat, or at least that’s where Cas had pulled Gadreel’s grace out of Sam, and where they’d cut Metatron to take his. But the only Grace _Nick_ had would be…

And Dean had said that Lucy confirmed it was valuable.

 _So Metatron_ was _telling the truth, at least in part. The Grace_ is _important to dealing with the Darkness._

“It only lasted a few seconds,” she went on. “Then...poof. But he’s been having nightmares since then. Not the usual ones. Different ones, worse ones, I think. I figured, if anyone might know what to do…” She shrugged. “But he’s...you guys scare him. He kept balking, and he wouldn’t talk about the nightmares or any of it with me.”

Huh. The way she described finding out, and the aftermath...Sam caught himself wondering exactly how close Jody and Nick were.

“...wait, you said you two were together when this happened?” Dean asked for him. “Does that mean together like…?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m a grown woman, Dean. I have a life outside you boys.”

“Seriously?” Dean asked. “You’re dating someone else who...I mean, after Crowley?”

Now she glared at him. “Oh, come on. You’ve _met_ Nick.”

She wasn’t wrong. Despite the...despite the associations, Nick was about as threatening as a week-old puppy. And that was _before_ he’d lost half his blood and the use of his right arm.

“Okay, fair point.” Dean shifted awkwardly. “Just…”

“Like I said, Dean. I’m a grown woman. I can make my own choices. Butt out.”

Sam jumped in to rescue his brother before Dean dug himself an even deeper hole. And possibly dug _himself_ into one, blurting the first question that came to his mind. “Do you know why he...why he said yes?”

Jody softened a little. “Yeah, I do. I’m not gonna tell you, though. So don’t ask.” She eyed him for a second, then added, “It’s his call who gets to find out. I mean, much as it can be, since it’s in the books. But I’m not telling anyone without his okay. Not even you.”

And Sam wasn’t about to ask him himself, because that would...yeah, that conversation would go well. “Could you ask him? Please? I…”

He caught Dean looking at him out of the corner of his eye, and did his best to ignore it.

She hesitated for a second, then nodded. “I’ll ask. No promises.”

“Thanks, Jody. This really...I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“I know,” she said, then paused for a minute. “Listen, I’m gonna stick around, at least for a while. I know a lot of this stuff is kind of out of my league but…”

 _But you don’t want Nick going into this kind of danger without you,_ Sam finished for her. “I get it,” he said. “We’ll probably meet up in the morning to plan our next move.”

“Got it,” she said. “I’ll see you then.”

 


	24. Part 3, Chapter IX

**IX.**

 

When Jody woke up the next morning, Nick was already up, sitting at the desk in one corner of the room and adjusting his sling.

“Morning,” she said.

He looked up, and smiled at her. He looked tired, but about a million miles better than he had yesterday. “Morning.”

She got up to join him, kissing him softly. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” he said. “Not great, but definitely okay.”

She nodded. “Well, that’s something.”

He was quiet for a second, then said, “There’s...there’s an angel here.”

“Yeah?” she said, carefully noncommittal. Her guess was that the angel was Castiel, especially since Nick was only tense, not terrified. But he was still clearly uncomfortable, and she was sort of conflicted on the subject of angels in general.

“Sam and Dean’s friend,” he confirmed. “He got here maybe an hour ago? The three of them are talking about...something, I don’t know what.” He fiddled with his sling again. “I didn’t...I didn’t think it would hit me this hard.”

“Do you want to leave?”

He shook his head. “I can’t do that,” he said. “Especially not with...not with this much at stake. I’ll do whatever Sam needs me to do, I just...I just don’t like being this close to an...to an angel.” He fiddled with his sling some more. “He saw me, in the hall, and just sort of...watched me for a minute, then offered to fix my shoulder.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t let him?” Jody asked.

“I’m sort of proud of myself that I actually managed to _say_ no before bolting,” he admitted, with a crooked smile.

So, not as bad as it could have been, especially since this was the first time he’d seen an angel since getting possessed. “I’ll stay between you,” she promised.

“Thanks,” he said, visibly relaxing. “And...thanks for staying. You being here makes all this a lot less hard.”

“You know me. Always happy to help.” She grinned and kissed him again.

What was shaping up to be a very nice moment, especially given their current circumstances, was interrupted by Sam knocking on the door.

Jody sighed theatrically, which got Nick to smile (which was the point), and got up to answer. “Morning, Sam.”

“Hey,” he said. “Uh, if you guys are up, Dean made pancakes and we’ve got a lot to go over.”

She nodded. “All right, we’ll be right out.”

“Great,” he said, and she shut the door.

“Here goes,” Nick said.

“Yeah.” She offered him a hand up and held on to it when they went out to join the others.

 

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“So that’s about where we stand,” Dean finished up.

It didn’t sound good, from where Jody was sitting. Some unknown person--probably a demon--was working with a hostile fallen angel and had resurrected John, _probably_ to deal with the Darkness, but no one was sure. And the hostile fallen angel had two of the four ingredients for the spell they needed to trap the Darkness, on top of that. Sam and Dean did have the third, relatively easy to find, but the fourth...

“So there’s...th-there’s a piece of him _inside_ me?” Nick was chalk white, and gripping Jody’s hand so hard it actually hurt.

Sam, across the table from them, nodded grimly. “Yeah. But we can get it out,” he promised. “It’s...I mean, we stick a giant needle in your throat and it hurts like hell, but we _can_ get it out. We will. We would even if we didn’t need it.”

_In his throat?_

And, suddenly, a lot of things made sense. When Oizys had cornered him the second time, drawing on his misery from his possession instead of the murders of his wife and son, she’d touched his throat. As a memory of Lucifer, she’d said, ‘you’ll never be free of me.’ And then, when all this had started last summer, his throat had started glowing.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I...okay.” He dropped his eyes to the table.

“I promise you, it’ll work,” Sam said.

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence, then the angel cleared his throat. “So, if you are ready, I will extract the Grace now, and then we can--”

“No,” Nick interrupted softly.

Everyone turned to look at him, and he flinched back.

Castiel frowned. “I understand if you’re afraid, but the quicker we move, the better.”

He shook his head mutely, looking anywhere but at the angel.

“Look, Nick…” Sam started.

“I...I know it’s important, I’m n-not…” he interrupted, then took a deep breath. “But I want _him_ to do it,” he said, nodding at John.

More silence. More staring.

“Can you--can you please not look at me like that?”

“Sorry,” Sam said.

“Why me?” John asked, suspicious, after another moment of silence.

Nick flinched again and looked down at the table, then took a deep breath. “I don’t like you, and I sure as hell don’t trust you. But you’re not an angel, and if...if Sam’s...if this is going to hurt as much as Sam says, I’d rather...I risk the least, in terms of what peace of mind I have, if you do it.”

There was a beat, while everyone considered what he’d said.

“Fine,” John said. “If that’s what you want...fine.”

 _I don’t think it’s fine,_ Jody thought. John had already tried to kill Nick at least once, and she was not at _all_ happy about handing him another chance.

But it was Nick’s call, in the end. And she sort of understood what he meant, in terms of peace of mind. Things with Sam were hellishly complicated, and things with Dean were only a little less so. The angel was right out, and he probably didn’t want to associate her with that kind of pain.

Didn’t mean she had to _like_ it.

“Okay,” Sam said, after another uncomfortable silence. “Uh, in the meantime, Dean and I can go check one of our lockers, see if it’s the one with the DVD.”

“I’ll stay here and monitor the extraction, just in case,” Castiel said.

Nick didn’t look all that happy about it, but glanced over at Jody and squeezed her hand before agreeing. Obviously, her feelings on that subject were clearer than she’d intended.

_If something goes wrong, the angel can maybe fix it._

“Okay, then,” Dean said. “I guess we’ll have Lucy keep on doing what she was doing--”

“Lucy’s here?” Jody interrupted. She hadn’t thought Sam and Dean would’ve brought her here, and the fact that they _had…_

 _That’s probably not good. Crap. What’s_ her _angle?_

“Yeah,” Dean said. “If you wanna walk with us to the car, I can fill you in.”

 _Also not good. There’s at least one person at the table who is_ not _aware of whatever secret she’s involved in._

“Sure,” she said.

“Right. Okay. Then, once we meet up again, we can figure out how to handle Metatron. Sound like a plan?”

No one objected. Jody squeezed Nick’s hand one more time, then got up to follow Sam and Dean out while Castiel went over the extraction process with Nick and John.

“So, what’s going on with Lucy?” Jody asked as soon as she was pretty sure they were out of earshot.

Sam and Dean exchanged a look, then Sam answered her. “Uh, short version? She’s a demon.”

Jody stopped cold. “ _What?_ ” A _demon?_ What the _hell?_

“She’s...uh, actually sort of how we got in touch with Nick,” Dean said. “She got us his contact details. We don’t know what her game is yet, other than she _says_ she’s just trying to help with the Darkness so she doesn’t get her ass killed along with the rest of us.”

“Why’d she stop and _help_ us?”

“We don’t know for sure,” Sam said. “Other than what she’s told us, like Dean said.”

“She _might_ not be lying,” Dean said. “But we don’t know. We’re keeping her around until we do.”

“Especially since...we think she might be involved with what’s going on with Dad.”

“Right,” Jody said, after taking a few seconds to process all that. “Right. Okay. What the hell should I do with her?”

“Nothing,” Sam assured her. “We’ve got her trapped in one of the unused bedrooms. Cas knows about her, so he can handle things if she somehow gets out.”

“...but your dad _doesn’t_ know.”

“No,” Dean admitted. “And we’d sort of like to keep it that way. For now.”

She stared at them. “This whole thing feels like a bad idea.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam said. “It just...feels like the least bad idea of all the options for dealing with her. At least until we know more.”

They _were_ the experts on this sort of thing. And if she approached the problem like Lucy being a human con artist and possible murderer, they weren’t wrong. “Okay,” she said. “I’m gonna tell Nick, though.”

“That’s your call,” Dean said. “Just keep Dad out of the loop, okay? For now.”

She nodded.

“We’ll check in when we’ve got the DVD,” Sam said, changing the subject abruptly. “Let us know when you guys are done here?”

“I will,” she promised.

The boys got into their car and she headed back inside, still more than a little unsettled by this whole mess.

_I just hope you boys know what the hell you’re doing._

 


	25. Part 3, Chapter X

**X.**

 

Castiel had finished talking them through the process and handed John the needle before leaving the two of them alone. “You ready for this?” John asked Cross quietly.

Cross smiled, wryness covering up a hell of a lot of terror, if he was any judge of it. And, however much he’d slipped--or however much the world had moved on without him--John was still damn sure he knew how to fucking read a man. “You think I like having a piece of him in me? Just...get it over with, okay?”

 _It’s your own damn fault for letting him in in the first place,_ John thought, but held his peace. For now.

Instead, he just nodded, and moved into position with the needle, then paused for a moment. _On the other hand...this might be my last chance. I know what was in_ my _head, and in Sam’s, but…_ “I gotta ask, man. Why the _hell_ did you do it?”

Cross’s face darkened. “You do not get to judge me.”

“It’s not about--”

“Just...do the needle thing and get this over with.”

 _Fine, then. Be that way._ John positioned himself behind Cross’s right shoulder, let out a slow breath, and aimed the needle precisely where Castiel had showed him.

As soon as it pierced Cross’s skin, a shock of ice, so cold it _burned,_ hit his hand, going all the way up to his fucking shoulder. He hissed, but did his best to ignore it. It wouldn’t take long to extract the damn Grace. He’d put up with worse for longer. This was too damn important to let pain get in the way.

He let out another breath and started to pull back on the stopper. Cross tensed, and John could hear his breath catch in his throat, but he didn’t scream. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing; Sam and Castiel had both warned him there would be pain, and screaming. His respect for the other man crept up a notch. At least he could fucking handle pain.

Which meant that probably _wasn’t_ how Lucifer had broken him before, and just raised more questions.

John shoved those thoughts out of his mind, and kept pulling, trying to keep the pressure as even as possible. As much as he thought the son of a bitch deserved to die for what he’d done, he knew that that would completely fucking break the boys’ sheriff friend. He didn’t want to do that to her, or to them.

For a second, the space of one heartbeat, everything went like it was supposed to. But as soon as John saw a swirl of blue-white light just fucking _touching_ the glass, the syringe _shattered._

John scrambled back, throwing up an arm to protect his eyes. He felt burning-cold shards bury themselves in his skin, but at least he wasn’t fucking blinded.

Once he was sure the glass had finished flying, he cautiously lowered his arm to check and see if Cross had survived the explosion. Obviously, the extraction hadn’t worked, and he was still the only source of Lucifer’s Grace outside the fucking Cage; if he’d died, they were screwed.

He was still breathing, at least. Shallow and not all that steady, but John could see his chest rising and falling. Good. There were a few shards buried in his shoulder--fortunately, the one John had already fucked up for him, so he wasn’t about to lose any more mobility--and his cheek, but it looked like his eyes were okay. The business end of the needle was right where John had left it, with a thin layer of ice coating it.

John eyed it for a second, then decided he didn’t want to risk pulling it out until he was fucking positive he could handle it safely. It probably wouldn’t do any more damage than it already had, unless it got moved the wrong way. It could wait, as long as he could keep Nick fucking still.

More concerning, though, was that Cross’s eyes were glassy, and his lips faintly blue. There was frost on his eyelashes, too.

 _Damn it._ He moved around to Cross’s other shoulder to check his pulse--using the other wrist meant less chance of fucking with the needle by accident--and swore under his breath at how _cold_ he was.

Not good; but that, at least, was something he could start working on right away. He found a thermostat and punched it up as high as he could, then piled everything even remotely resembling a blanket he could find on top of Cross.

It took a few minutes, but finally, Cross stirred. John put a hand on his undamaged shoulder. “Don’t move, I haven’t taken the needle out yet.”

Cross started to nod, caught himself, and blinked instead.

 _He fucking listens. Good._ “You have any idea what the hell that was?”

Two blinks. Okay, he would assume for now that meant ‘no.’

“Can you talk, or are you just tired?”

Cross frowned faintly, then croaked something that sounded vaguely like, “hurts,” before coughing several times.

Well, at least he _could_ talk. Whatever the fuck had caused that explosion hadn’t done either of them any permanent damage. John could live with that, at least for now.

He had planned to ask a few more questions, but someone tapped on the door and pushed it open without waiting for an answer. Sam slipped through. He took in the situation at a glance, and visibly deflated. “It didn’t work?”

Cross started to shake his head again, but stopped at a sharp look from John. Good to know he could still manage that, at least, even if it didn’t work as well on the boys as it used to.

“The syringe shattered,” John explained instead. “Still trying to work out how and why.”

“Shit. Okay. Um, we’ll figure out a way to deal with that. One way or another.” Sam looked uneasily over at Cross. “I promise, okay?”

Cross was quiet for a long moment, then said, much clearer than before, “Cold. Need some kind of...of insulation.” He turned faintly green, which was mirrored on Sam’s face.

“...I’m missing something here,” John said. He’d been having too damn much of that feeling lately, and he didn’t like it at _all._

“No,” Sam said. “We’ll come up with something else.”

Cross flinched a little, and closed his eyes. “Okay.”

Well, at least he listened to Sam. As long as John and Dean could control Sam, and Sam could control Cross, they could probably get out of this fucking mess intact.

“What about the DVD?” he asked.

Sam shook his head. “Not in the first locker. Bunker was on the way to the second, so we figured we’d stop in and regroup.”

 _Of fucking course._ Zero for two, just fucking _perfect._

“So, back to square one,” Cross said.

“Yeah. I’ll get Cas to pull the needle out, okay?”

Cross tensed. “...okay.”

Sam nodded and headed back out, leaving John to clean up the rest of the glass. “What did you mean, insulation?” he asked Cross, after a few seconds of silence.

“Demon blood,” he said, after a long hesitation. “It’s...while I was...was p-possessed, it k-kept me alive.”

 _Fuck._ That explained why Sam knew what he meant, and why neither of them wanted to talk about it. _Fucking hell, what the fuck_ else _do I not know?_

 _Once we’re cleaned up in here,_ he decided, _I am going to get the boys alone and get them to stop fucking bullshitting me._

Maybe then the world would start making goddamned _sense_ again.

 


	26. Part 3, Chapter XI

**XI.**

 

While Sam was touching base with the others, Dean went in to check on Lucy. Maybe now she’d _finally_ give him some straight goddamn answers.

She was sitting in the middle of the floor, reading one of the books from the library with a stack piled neatly just inside the trap. She looked up when she heard him come in.

“I was wondering when anyone would come talk to me. I was getting bored.” She dumped her book on top of the stack. It wobbled a little, and Dean steadied it, pushing it a little closer into the trap.

“Let’s talk,” he said.

“I’m all ears.”

“You told me and Sam you’d made a deal for a resurrection. Was it Dad?” Sam had asked, and so had he, but maybe repetition would finally get through to her.

“That old song,” she said, and sighed, poking at her stack of books. “Really? Honestly, why do you keeping harping on about that? You have bigger problems.”

He stared at her. “Bigger than Metatron somehow getting the power to resurrect my dad?”

“Yes.” She smiled faintly. “A word of advice,” she said.

Dean eyed her suspiciously. He knew damn well that demons didn’t hand out advice free of charge. Especially not crossroads demons. _Especially_ not crossroads demons who were already holding _other_ information hostage for who-the-fuck-knew what reason. “What do you want?”

Lucy smirked faintly at him, but refused to answer. “You need to keep Nick alive,” she said instead.

It was his turn to roll his eyes. “Yeah, I know. We sorta got that memo a while ago.”

“Not what I meant,” she said. Her face turned serious. “I meant during and after the Grace extraction.”

He stared at her for a minute. “Look, we’re not about to set the guy up to get his ass killed or anything.”

“I’m sure,” she said dryly. “But I know damn well that, when it comes to people outside your inner circle, you can be a bit careless of their safety. And I know that, even if you decide you like him, Nick will never make it into your inner circle.”

He shifted a little uncomfortably. She wasn’t wrong--Sam had been saying the same damn thing for months, and Nick would probably never be that kind of close to any of them. Even if he and Jody stayed together for the rest of their lives. “What’s your point?”

“Nick isn’t part of your inner circle. But your sheriff friend is, unless I miss my guess?”

 _Shit._ “Jody’s not--if something happens to him, she’ll--” It wasn’t like she hadn’t weathered worse, right? However close she’d gotten to Nick, it couldn’t be as bad as her husband and kid, or even Bobby. Right?

“She’ll come to me,” Lucy said, with a quiet edge to her voice. “Or to someone like me. _Maybe_ you’ll get lucky and she’ll seek out the angel instead, but if she doesn’t...well. I’ll take the deal. I’d be a fool not to.”

He shook his head. “No. Jody’s not that stupid. She’s a hell of a lot smarter than I ever was.”

“I’m sure she is. Under normal circumstances, anyway,” she said. “But she’s lost so many people, so many times, in so many horrible ways. There comes a point for every human where they simply can’t take anymore. And to lose another lover would break her completely. So keep Nick alive, or you’ll end up losing her, too.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, after a minute. He didn’t _want_ to believe her, but...

Well, he’d seen Nick and Jody together. And Lucy wasn’t wrong, about breaking points. Maybe losing Nick, in a vacuum, wouldn’t hit Jody as hard as--let alone harder than--anything else she’d gone through, but on _top_ of all the other crap that had rained down on her, it might be enough.

“Because of all the history we share, Dean,” she said.

_History? What in the hell…?_

And then, a horrifying thought struck him. “ _Meg?_ ” he hissed. Because it wasn’t like there were any other demons they had history with except Crowley. And, true, she’d been an uneasy ally before, but he had no fucking clue what the hell kind of game was she playing this time. Especially since she’d never been shy about identifying herself before--and, hell, wasn’t she supposed to be _dead?_

Lucy blinked at him, then glowered, visibly offended. “Of course not. She’s dead, has been for years. You were _there_ when she died, weren’t you? Besides, the King made damn sure we knew he’d finally killed her--the last loyalist standing. The things he did with her corpse…”

Okay. Not Meg. Fine. “Then who the hell--”

Faster than he could react, her eyes went red and her hand was around his throat.

 _She got out of the trap how the fuck did she get out of--the books, the books damaged the paint, fuck fuck_ fuck _why the fuck didn’t I drag her down into the dungeon fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK--_

“You left me to die,” she said quietly, tightening her grip and glaring right into his eyes. “I _begged_ you for help, and you left me to _die._ You _knew_ what was awaiting me, you just didn’t care to think about it, you selfish _bastard._ And now you’ve _forgotten me?_ ”

For a minute, his mind whirled, uncomprehending. The lack of oxygen was not helping him think either. Because they didn’t really leave demons to die, they just flat killed them, or--

And then it hit him.

“ _Bela?_ ” he managed to choke out, around her hand.

She smirked again. “Hello, Dean. Did you miss me?”

Dean was starting to get white spots on the edge of his vision which-- _not good this is not good fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck--_ when--

“Let him go, Lucy.”

 _Nick?_ What the fuck, what was Nick doing here, was Dean dreaming this or--

For a second, Bela let up enough that his vision cleared, and he could see Nick in the doorway, pale but calm, pointing a pistol-- _that’s not mine or Sam’s, is it Jody’s?_ \--at the demon, only a slight shaking of his hand giving away how nervy he must be.

 _Okay. If you’re shaking that much point that thing the fuck_ away from me.

He heard Bela laughing in his ear. “Really, Nick, it’s sweet of you to try, but you have to know that thing won’t work on me.”

“I know,” he said, then took a deep breath and pointed it at his chin.

_...okay, when I said ‘away from me,’ that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind._

Bela froze. “What--”

“Let him go,” Nick repeated quietly, “or lose the most valuable thing on Earth.”

There wasn’t any real anger, or even bitterness, in the way he said it--the way he described himself. More like--resignation, that was the word.

“Put the gun _down._ ”

 _And now Dad’s here. Because that’s_ exactly _who we need to defuse a freaking hostage situation fuck fuck_ fuck.

Dad had his gun pointing at Nick’s kneecaps.

Bela tightened her grip, and Dean’s vision started to blur again.

Nick ignored Dad, keeping his eyes focused on Bela. His hands were still shaking. “Let him go. Or I pull the trigger.”

“I swear to God, you’ll be down a damned leg, too, unless you put. The gun. _Down._ ”

“I’ve got a better idea.”

Jody had somehow gotten _behind_ them, what the--how the _hell--?_

He heard an eerily familiar click, an antique gun cocking.

He didn’t have to see it to know it was the _Colt._

Somehow, somewhere along the line, _Jody_ had gotten her hands on the _Colt._

“You let go of Dean, _everyone_ puts their guns down, or _I_ pull the trigger.”

For a half second that felt like for-freaking-ever, nobody moved, then Bela’s hand was gone from his throat.

He dropped to his knees, coughing and gasping for air, and felt Sam’s hands on his shoulders.

“You okay?” Sam asked quietly.

“Y-yeah,” he wheezed.

“What the hell set her…?”

“Bela,” he said, then coughed again. “She’s freaking _Bela,_ Sam.”

“I’m still right here,” she said, above them. “I did what you wanted, Sheriff. Kindly put the damn gun down.”

“Sam, Dean, one of you have cuffs or something that’ll hold a demon?” Jody said. “I got a feeling mine won’t.”

“Right. Yeah. Uh, I’ll go get them.” Sam let go and stood up.

“Cuffs?” Dad asked.

“We have history,” Dean said shortly, pushing himself up, still massaging his neck. “And _questions._ ”

Jody still had Bela covered with the Colt--which, now that he had air and could think, maybe it actually made sense for her to have it; it had gotten left behind in Carthage, and Nick was as likely as anyone to know where it had gone from there.

Anyway, Bela was under control--as much as that bitch ever was--which left Dean free to deal with Nick.

“What the hell was that about?” he asked.

Nick looked away. He’d put his damn gun down, at least. “I had to get her attention, so Jody could sneak around behind.”

“Yeah, and if I’d known _that_ was what you were planning…” Jody said, sharp with the same kind of mix of fear and anger _he_ always used when he caught Sam doing something stupid and noble.

“I was bluffing,” Nick said. “You know I was bluffing, right?”

“I know,” she said. “Don’t ever do it again.”

“I won’t. I’m sorry.”

“ _Good._ ”

Yeah. Dean hadn’t had a girlfriend in a long time, but he knew damn well Jody was still pissed. Nick would have a _lot_ of groveling to do to make up for pulling this stunt. “Seriously, don’t. She might’ve called your bluff before Jody got in position,” Dean said.

“I couldn’t think of anything else.”

“Which is why you leave it to people who know what the hell they’re doing,” Dad said. He’d lowered his gun without putting it away.

Nick stiffened a little, but didn’t respond. Instead, he said, “Jody, I’m sorry. I won’t--I’ll play bait again, if I have to, but not like that. I promise.”

 _At least he realizes that was a damned stupid move to pull,_ Dean thought.

Sam got back with the cuffs before Jody could reply, and then they were busy getting Bela locked down and the subject had been tabled. For now.

As soon as Bela was secured in the dungeon, though, Nick touched Jody’s wrist lightly, and the two of them slipped off, presumably to go have their fight and make up. Hopefully, anyway.

_Huh. That’s...that’s actually smart. Get it over with, get back to being friends faster. Don’t hold on to secrets or resentment until it explodes._

And, with that thought, he felt a faint stab of guilt, because of Amara and that _stupid fucking bond_ and he just couldn’t bring himself to come clean about it. Maybe that was why Sam never told him about the weird-ass kind of evil shit he got involved in until it exploded in their faces. He could almost kind of sort of understand that impulse now.

“Dean.”

_And now I have to explain Bela to Dad. Greeeeeeat._

“Yeah.”

“You have history?”

 _Oh, boy._ “From...uh, from before she was a demon,” he said.

Dad just stared at him.

 _Jesus fucking Christ, how much do we know that he doesn’t?_ He decided to ignore that question. He didn’t think he’d like the answer.

“Demons were all human once,” he said. “Bela--she was a thief, maybe you heard of her? Bela Talbot. Bobby knew who she was, first time we ran into her.”

Dad didn’t answer right away. “Name rings a bell,” he finally said.

“Right. Um, we found out, after a while, she’d sold her soul, and her deal was coming due. We kept running into each other, she was scrambling to get out of it. Stole the Colt from us, but that wasn’t enough to save her skin. She was supposed to kill us, but we were wise to her and skipped town.”

 _You left me to_ die.

He cleared his throat. _Not like she didn’t deserve it, selling her soul so her_ parents _would fucking_ die. “We were on the phone with her when the hellhounds came calling, and we told her we couldn’t help.” _And even if we had had time at that point, after everything she did to us, why the hell_ should _we have helped?_

 _Saving people means_ all _of them._

_Fuck._

“Anyway, I guess she remembers enough to hold a grudge.”

“Yeah,” Dad said. “Mind explaining why that means you gotta keep her alive?”

 _Hoo, boy._ Well, they’d have to explain that theory sooner or later. “Right. Uh. First time we ran into her--this year, I mean--we were trying to track Nick down. She mentioned...uh, a bargain for a resurrection that she thought might go south on her.”

“You think she brought me back.”

He nodded uncomfortably. “Yeah. She...I mean, she said she bargained for an artifact, not a soul. Timing fits. And Metatron has the demon tablet, he might’ve broken it up to sell off for favors from demons. He sure as hell couldn’t’ve resurrected you without help.”

Dad chewed that over silently for a minute. “So, who questions her?”

“Cas, to start,” Dean said. Much as he didn’t want to admit it, putting some distance between him and Bela might be a good idea. “Sam and I need to get the DVD from the other locker, anyway. When we get back, we can figure out our next move based on what he finds out.”

He nodded. “Fine. I’ll ride with you boys.”

“Uh, sure.”

“I don’t think this is the only thing you’ve been keeping from me,” Dad said.

_Oh, crap._

“That stops. Now. Understood?”

And, just like that, he was a kid again. He swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“Fill me in on the way,” Dad said, then turned and left the room.

 _Crap. Crap, crap,_ crap.

This was going to be a very long, very uncomfortable trip.

 


	27. Part 3, Chapter XII

**XII.**

 

John didn’t say much when they finally got to the boys’ locker. He’d gotten more than enough on the drive up here to mull over.

Besides, by a stroke of luck, the boys were storing their angel porn not far from where Marv--Metatron, fucking _Metatron_ \--was living. That gave John all the fucking opportunity he needed to slip away and take care of business. And he was _not_ going to leave things unsaid with that bastard any longer than he had to.

When the boys both had their heads buried in boxes, he pulled out his phone and sent a quick text message. _We need to meet._

The lying son of a bitch texted back less than a minute later. _Where have you been? It’s been days, I was very concerned._

_Problems with Cross. Non-fatal ones. Where are you?_

A longer break this time, then Metatron sent him an address. Only a couple blocks away. Good.

_I’ll be there in ten. Don’t move._

He slipped the phone back in his pocket without waiting for a response. “I’ll be back,” he called to Sam and Dean.

“Where’re you headed?” Sam asked, poking his head around from one of the shelves.

“Take a look around,” he lied. “I’ll probably go through the whole complex, may take me a bit.”

Sam looked over at Dean, then nodded. “Yeah, okay. Text if you find anything.”

He bit back an _I know what I’m fucking doing_ retort, because he didn’t want to waste time on the fight. Especially since, after everything they’d had to confess to him on the drive up, they were probably grateful for a little time without him hanging over them. “Yeah,” he said instead, then headed out the door.

It took ten minutes to get to the address the lying angel had given him, and Metatron was already waiting. Good.

“What’s going on?” he demanded. “What went wrong with Cross?”

“Not here,” John said, grimly.

He stared at him for a long moment. “You think you were _followed?_ ”

“No,” he snapped back. “But someone else _is_ after Cross.”

“Damn it.” He looked around. “Okay, in here.” He headed for a door in the wall.

As soon as he and the false Prophet were alone, John hit him hard and fast across the face.

Not as hard as he _could,_ and avoiding the bastard’s jaw as much as possible, because he wanted some fucking answers. Couldn’t get those if his target couldn’t talk.

Metatron reeled backwards. “Wh--John, what--?”

“You lied to me,” he said. “About everything. _Metatron._ ”

The fallen angel’s eyes widened for a split second, then narrowed, and John could practically see the cogs in his head turning, trying to find a way to weasel out of this mess. “You have to understand--”

John didn’t let him finish.

He hit him again, this time to the gut, and Metatron doubled over, all the breath leaving him in a whuff.

John caught him with one hand, hauling him up by the collar, and kept hitting, every place he could reach--face, abdomen, as long as it would fucking _hurt._

“You told me--” _hit_ “--that you were a Prophet--” _hit_ “--that we were working for Michael--” _hit_ “--that we were trying to stop the Darkness--”

“We were!” Metatron choked out, and where he’d gotten the fucking breath to do it, John had no idea.

He dropped him and let him crumple, and just watched him pant for a few seconds. “And why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m smarter than that,” he said. “I’m smarter than _all_ of them. If we don’t stop her? The Darkness will destroy _everything,_ including me.”

All right, fine. John could buy self-interest as a motive. So maybe Metatron _had_ actually been on the level about that part of things. But even if _that_ were true, he had lied about fucking _everything else._

Obviously, the former Scribe could read those thoughts in his face and shrank back, holding up his arms to protect himself. “I didn’t lie. Well, I did, but only--I only lied about Michael, and being a Prophet. Everything else-- _everything_ else, the Grace, th-the--”

John kicked him, knocking the wind out of him again. “You told me Michael brought me back. You used a fucking _demon_ to do it.”

Metatron spat out a mouthful of blood. John had obviously ruptured something inside him.

_Good._

“I didn’t have a _choice,_ ” he wheezed. “I needed you, and the angels want my head on a platter, and Castiel _stole_ my Grace.”

That last part, he knew, was fucking true. He’d gotten it from Sam and Dean, and even if they’d gotten up to some _seriously_ shady shit without him to supervise them, he doubted they’d fucking outright _lie_ to him. Not about something this important. Keeping secrets? Sure. They did that all the fucking time. But they didn’t _lie._ Not to him.

Fine. Next question. “Where are the ashes?”

Another flash of alarm on Metatron’s face. “I can take you there. I-I’ve got the demon tablet in the same place--”

“I don’t give a damn about the demon tablet,” he interrupted. “Tell me where Adam’s ashes are.”

“I can take--”

He hit him again, hearing a sickening, satisfying crack as he fractured the bastard’s cheekbone. “Tell me.”

Metatron didn’t whimper. He had balls enough for that, at least. “S-storage unit. It’s w-warded, true angels--angels who still have their Grace--and demons can’t find it.”

Well, that was something, at least. Shouldn’t be too hard to fucking find. Metatron wouldn’t have been able to stash his prizes too far away; there was a damn good chance it was in the same storage place where Sam and Dean had a locker. Or, if not, there could only be so many in this fucking town. All they had to do was get Castiel to search for a fucking blind spot in one of them, and they’d have the ashes.

“The salt’s there, too?”

“Y-yes.”

Even better. One less stop to make. Assuming the bastard was finally telling the fucking truth.

“I’m not lying, John. I’m _not._ ”

“ _You_ saying that don’t mean a damn thing.” He took a steadying breath. “Last question.”

Metatron swallowed. “Last question?”

“How do I get the Grace out of Cross without killing him?”

“You can’t.”

That earned the rat bastard another hit. “Try again.”

“You _can’t,_ ” Metatron insisted. “You need demon blood for it. You’ll have to coat the _entire_ needle in it. It’s the only thing in the world that’ll buffer the tainted Grace. Without it, the needle will shatter. And there’s no way to avoid giving him some when you stick him with it. Only Nick never took any by himself, just while he was possessed, so if he _ever_ had a tolerance for it, it’s long gone by now. It’d be like--like--like giving someone totally clean a rockstar-sized hit of cocaine. And the person you’re giving it to has a freaking heart condition. You _can’t_ get it out without killing him.”

And if it wasn’t for Sheriff Mills, John wouldn’t give a damn. Still, she had her daughters to keep her going. And maybe Castiel could restart Cross’s fucking heart or something. Either way, not his problem. Not anymore. He’d made an effort, which was more than Lucifer’s fucking vessel deserved. Mills would be fine. His boys would see to that.

“Fine,” he said, then pulled out the Colt--he’d borrowed it from Mills that morning, leaving her a note in case she needed it before he and the boys got back. Not that he thought she would, locked down in the fucking bunker with Cross and Castiel. Not since she’d already shown she wouldn’t fucking shoot Bela. And, yeah, Metatron passed every test like a human should, but he was still at least _partly_ a fucking angel. John refused to take the chance.

Metatron’s eyes went wide again. “Wh-what--no, no, no, no, you can’t--you _need_ me, do you understand? I know how to combine the four Graces. I know how to extract them all. You _need_ me!”

His voice was getting higher and higher pitched, which just made the blood pound harder in John’s ears.

This was the thing that had resurrected him just to fucking manipulate him.

This was the thing that had used a fucking _demon_ to do it, granting her who-the-fuck-knew what kind of power in exchange.

This was the thing that had preyed on a weak-minded angel wearing Sam to kill one of the boys’ friends.

This was the thing that had driven Dean to the Mark.

This was the thing that had fucking _killed_ Dean.

This was the thing that had made Dean into a demon, scaring Sam so far off the goddamned reservation he broke the fucking _world_ to keep it from fucking happening again.

This was the thing that was ultimately responsible for the Darkness being unleashed.

John didn’t give a damn if the thing at his feet responded to every test the way a human would. This thing was a monster.

This thing was worth a fucking bullet.

“You _need_ me,” Metatron begged.

“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t.”

He pointed the gun right between the fallen angel’s eyes, counted his breaths, and pulled the trigger.

 

 


	28. Part 4: Lightbringer, Chapter I

**_Part 4: Lightbringer_ **

 

 

**I.**

 

“Got it!” Dean said, extracting himself from the pile of boxes where he’d stashed the DVD.

“Finally,” Sam said, looking up from the box he’d started unpacking. “You think we should just haul all this crap back to the Bunker, sort through it?”

“Yeah, maybe someday, if we have time. Priorities, though, you know?” Because it _would_ be nice to have all their crap collected in one safe location, now that they had one; Dean was pretty sure he could still call the bunker safe, since the Stynes were...no longer a problem. Of course, they never seemed to think of it when they had a string of days all together to work on that sort of project. Maybe Sam would remember this time.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, dumping his pile back in the box and shoving it back onto its shelf.

“Dad back yet?” Dean asked, glancing at the entrance.

Dad had asked a lot of uncomfortable questions on the drive up here, and Sam and Dean had told him a lot more than they’d wanted to, but he’d taken everything a hell of a lot better than Dean had expected him to.

Which, now that he thought about it, may have been a warning sign of some sort. Because when the hell had Dad ever taken news like the kind they’d had to give him _calmly?_

_Maybe we should’ve tried to keep him from going off like that._

But it was too late to fix that now.

Sam shook his head. “No, he hasn’t--” He was interrupted when his phone rang. “Hey, Jody, what’s-- _what?_ ”

Dean was instantly on alert. “What’s--”

Sam switched to speaker. “Okay, say that again? I’ve got Dean with me.”

“Your dad has the Colt,” she said. “He left a note, said he’d give it back when you guys got back, but--I don’t know, I don’t know what he’s planning.”

From the look on Sam’s face, he might have an idea. “Jody, is Cas with you?” Sam asked

“Uh, yeah. Hang on.”

“I’m here, Sam,” Cas said after a couple seconds.

“When you tracked Metatron down before, where’d you find him?”

 _Oh,_ fuck.

Not that Dean had any real objection to putting a bullet between Metatron’s eyes, but--assuming they could get him to tell the fucking truth--he was probably the only person outside the Cage who might be able to tell them how to put the Grace together. Or, even more important, how to _extract_ it safely, from Nick and the DVD and whatever the hell Raphael and Michael had left behind.

But Dad had the Colt, and a pretty damn good reason for a personal vendetta against Metatron.

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,_ fuck.

“Omaha. Is that where you are?”

“Fuck. Yes. Dammit. Thanks for letting us know, we’ll--we’ll track him down.” Sam hung up and started poking at his phone without waiting for an answer.

“We need to try and track him,” Dean said. “Before he--”

“I turned on his phone’s GPS,” Sam said.

“You lojacked _Dad?_ ” Though, as soon as he said it, Dean figured it made a hell of a lot of sense. Neither of them knew where Dad’s head was at, except for the fact that Metatron had been working him for months.

Sam gave him an exasperated look, then said, “He’s not far. Come on.”

Dean nodded, made sure the DVD was safe in his bag, and pelted with Sam for the car.

 

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Just like Sam had said, Dad hadn’t gone far.

They still got there too damn late to stop him.

The shot went off less than a second after they piled out of the car, before they’d even gotten to the door.

The two of them took half a second to exchange a glance. Working together as long as they had, that was all they needed to put a plan together. They split up; Dean went for the closer entrance, Sam went around the side to see if he could find another. _Probably_ the shot had come from Dad, but they couldn’t be too sure until they got in there. Better safe than sorry.

And, sure enough, when they got in, they saw Dad standing over Metatron, dead, a pool of blood slowly spreading around his head.

Dad looked up when they joined him, but didn’t say anything. And, for a long moment, neither did either of them.

Sam eventually broke the silence. “What the hell, Dad?”

Dad glowered at him. “He was a monster, Sammy. I killed him. Last I checked, that’s what we do.”

Sam opened his mouth to argue, but to everyone’s surprise--including his own--Dean beat him to it.

“It’s not that simple. Not anymore.”

Dad was visibly thrown by that. “What?”

“It’s _not,_ ” Dean insisted. “And, believe me, I wish like hell it was, but we can’t always shoot the monster in the face.” Whether or not Metatron counted as one anymore, without his Grace, was another argument for another time. “Sometimes...sometimes we have to let them live--”

“You--”

He got louder, talking over Dad. “Sometimes we have to let ‘em live because there are bigger fish to fry. _Apocalyptic_ fucking fish, Dad. Sometimes they know things, and we have to keep them alive ‘til we can fucking beat it out of them. Sometimes they _have_ things, and we have to take the bad deal because the alternative is fucking _worse._ The world is _not_ as simple as it was when you died, okay? We do what we have to do to keep as many fucking people as we can alive. Even if that means letting an asshat like Metatron skate for a while.”

His ears were ringing, and he realized he was shouting--actually _shouting,_ at _Dad._

Sam put a hand on his arm, lightly. “It’s done,” he said, quietly. “We can’t undo it. Yelling at each other won’t fix it.”

Dean took a deep breath. “Fine. Did you at least question him before you went in, guns blazing?”

“Of course I did,” Dad snapped. “He told me where he stashed the salt and the ashes.”

Which probably meant Michael and Raphael’s Grace fragments. “Yeah?”

“Storage locker, warded against angels. I figure we have your _friend_ look for blind spots.”

 _Oh. Oh,_ fuck.

Sam and Dean exchanged a look, and Sam fielded that one.

“It doesn’t...I don’t think it works like that, Dad,” he said quietly.

“And that’s not--did he tell you how to get the freaking Grace _out_ of all these things? Or what we’re supposed to do with it when we have it? Do we even know if it’s a weapon, or-or a cage, or a key?” _Like the rings, maybe it’s like the rings, but then we’d need the right incantation and_ fuck.

“Dean,” Sam cut in, because he was shouting again.

Holy shit, maybe Sam had actually had the right idea--blowing up in the old man’s face every couple days was fucking therapeutic. It sure as hell beat letting it all fester for _ten goddamn years_ and then the things you let slide because you respect him and love him suddenly you _can’t_ anymore and…

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking fuck._

“Let’s just--get back to the bunker,” Dean finally said. “Maybe the Letters have something, if you and Cas can find that book you used for the spell to track Gadreel.”

“Yeah.”

Because Dad had fucking killed the only other resource they’d had.

 _Not the only one,_ he reminded himself, thinking of where Sam had thought his visions were sending him.

 _No. No, the Men of Letters will have something. We’re not_ that _screwed._

He put his gun away, picked his bag back up, and headed out of the room before he could blow up at Dad again.

He thought he heard Dad start to say something, but Sam cut him off, quiet enough that he couldn’t make out the words. And, right now, he didn’t give a damn.

_Dad, if you put Sam--or, hell, even Nick--down at the Cage again…_

His ears still ringing, he stalked back to the car, every ounce of will focused on keeping himself from blowing the fuck up again.

 


	29. Part 4, Chapter II

**II.**

 

None of them broke the silence on the way back to the bunker. Dean was still pissed and barely holding together; Sam could tell that much just by the way he was gripping the Impala’s steering wheel. Dad, in the back seat, was just as pissed, with an unsettling layer of defensiveness on top.

Just one more way Dad’s resurrection had completely upended Sam and Dean’s world.

 _At least we got the DVD,_ he reminded himself. _And it’ll take a while, but maybe Dad was right, and Cas can find the right storage locker from process of elimination. We’ve taken a step in the right direction._

Along with at least two steps back. And they had no idea what kind of timeframe they were working on. Or how to extract Grace from inanimate objects. Or how to extract it from Nick without killing him. Or what the hell Bela’s game was.

Cas, Nick, and Jody were waiting for them when they pulled into the garage. Cas was impassive as always; Nick was tense; Jody had a dead-calm look that meant heads were probably gonna roll.

Sam winced internally. _Maybe she’ll just punch Dad in the face again…_

Hopefully not, though. Mostly because, with the mood Dad was in, another incident like that probably _would_ turn into a straight-up fistfight before he and Dean could pull them apart, and Jody would probably come off worse in it.

To his relief, all she did was size John up and hold out her hand. “My gun.”

He stiffened a little, but handed it back without complaint.

“Bela?” Dean asked.

“Contained,” Cas assured him. “I added a more few traps and wards to your dungeon for extra security. But I was unable to extract any more information from her.”

“As long as she’s not going anywhere,” Dean said. “Let’s head in, talk strategy.”

Cas nodded, and the six of them filed into the library, taking seats around one of the tables.

Dean dumped the bag with the DVD in the center of the table. “So. First problem, finding Metatron’s locker.”

“I told you, we look for an angelic blind spot,” Dad said.

Cas frowned. “We don’t know how Metatron designed his wards. If they’re simple ones, yes, that is an option, though it will be time-consuming. But Metatron was the Scribe. I doubt his wards will be simple. They may kill me if I even look in their direction.”

_Fuck._

“We got any other options?” Sam asked.

“We could possibly bargain with a Reaper,” Cas said. “Gain access to Metatron’s ghost, assuming he left one. Angels don’t have souls, but he seemed convinced that there was a part of me that would behave like one if I died as a human. He told me I would be able to come to Heaven and tell him my story.”

Of course, finding a Reaper who would play ball with them, after they killed Death last year...based on the one he’d talked to last fall, that was one hell of a dangerous long shot.

“Okay, that’s an option,” Dean said; though, from the look on his face, he’d thought through the same implications Sam had.

“If you got me close, I could find the ashes,” Dad cut in. “I resonated with them before.”

“Unless he configured the wards to dampen that effect,” Cas pointed out.

“I guess our first step is to figure out what kind of wards he could have put in place,” Jody said. “I mean, if he’s basically human now, that limits it, right?”

“Some,” Cas admitted. “Not as much as I’d like, but some.”

“I’ll start on that,” Sam said. He’d gotten to know the Letters’ filing system pretty well since they’d moved in here three years ago, and he’d been researching crap like this since before Dad had given him his first gun. If there was anything in the Bunker library that could help, he’d find it.

“I can help,” Nick offered. He shrank back when everyone turned to him, then took a deep breath and clarified. “I have an MA in history. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s research.”

“See if you can find anything about how to extract the Grace and what we’re supposed to do with it once we’ve got it, too,” Dean said. “Won’t do us any damn good to get past the wards and not be able to use any of it.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. _We may have to go to a Reaper to talk to Metatron after all…_

“All right. That’s where we are for now.” Dean stood up, grabbing for his bag. “I’m gonna take another run at Bela, once I’ve got this stashed somewhere safe.”

“Good plan,” Jody said. “Want me to sit in?”

“Sure.” They’d never had Jody help with an interrogation before, but she was a cop. Might be worth a shot.

Nick frowned at the bag. “The DVD’s in there?”

“Yeah, why?”

He hesitated for a second, then took a deep breath, visibly steeling himself. “Can I see it?”

Jody frowned a little. “Nick, what…?”

“Just...humor me for a second, please?”

Dean blinked. “Uh...sure?” He pulled the DVD out and passed it over to Nick.

“...this isn’t the right DVD.”

Sam’s heart sank. “What?” It was the right movie, at least, but they hadn’t really thought they’d need to check it was the right _copy._ Because if someone _had_ broken into their locker to steal it, they wouldn’t have replaced it, right?

“You’re _sure?_ ” Dean asked.

“How the hell would you know?” Dad asked, simultaneously.

Nick looked anywhere but at the others. “Because...b-because that’s one of about two things I…” He set the case down gingerly, as if it might bite him. “I remember it. It...how he felt about...about seeing...about k-killing him. It...it woke me up. But...but I don’t feel _anything_ from that. Even...e-even the Colt, when I touched it, I felt like I’d gotten shot again, and I didn’t...I didn’t really remember that clearly before.”

 _Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit,_ shit.

“You might want to watch it again, to be sure, ‘cause I...I could be wrong, I don’t...I don’t know how reliable any of this...any of my memories are,” Nick said. “But I...I’m pretty sure there’s no Grace in that DVD.”

Cas frowned, and held out a hand, hovering an inch or so above the case. “I don’t sense anything from it, either,” he said quietly. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I’m sure Gabriel took great pains to conceal the presence of his Grace, to maximize his chances for keeping Lucifer focused where he wanted him.”

Illusions all over the place, covering up what really mattered to him--yeah, that sounded like Gabriel, all right. And, yeah, they’d watch it to confirm, but if neither Nick nor Cas was picking anything up from it...

“Great,” Dean said. “Just...fucking great.”

“Can you pull this thing off without it?” Jody asked.

Sam shook his head. “We don’t even know for sure it’ll work with all four fragments,” he said. _Especially without knowing how to piece the fragments together._

“Maybe there’s something left where Gabriel died,” Dad suggested. “Or, Cross, did he drop anything else?”

Nick flinched a little, then shook his head slowly. “No, I...I don’t think so.”

“You said you remembered.”

“I do, I just…”

“Then did he or not?”

“Dad…” Sam started, then shook his head. “Look, pouncing on each other isn’t gonna solve anything.”

“There’s something else we could try,” Cas said.

Sam blinked, and started to ask, but Dean cut him off.

“I thought you said that wasn’t real.”

 _Oh._ Right. When Metatron had captured Cas, he’d had that Gabriel vision. He hadn’t given them details, only said it was an illusion, Metatron deciding Cas would listen to the Archangel.

“I told you Metatron manipulated my perceptions. But even knowing that, for it to be that complete and that convincing, he must have had _something_ more than the references in the books to go on.” Cas shook his head. “Maybe _he’s_ the one who stole the message. Or maybe he had some other fragment to work with, somehow.”

“He could’ve gotten through the wards,” Sam said, trying to ignore the piece of him that wondered why, if Metatron had had the DVD--or some kind of access to Gabriel’s Grace--all along, he’d told Dad about it. They were clutching at straws either way, and who the hell know why Metatron did _anything_ he did? “So...what, then? We storm Heaven, try to figure out if he stashed it there before we took him down?”

Cas frowned. “If we have to. But that is risky, and I don’t think we can access the same channel we did last time. The others will be watching.”

Sam looked away. “Yeah…”

“Wait a minute,” Dean said. “Nick, whose blade did Lucifer use to kill Gabriel?”

For a second Nick looked confused, then he nodded, catching on. “Not his own. He didn’t--w-we never had it.”

“Did he take it away with him?”

“I…” He closed his eyes, holding his breath for a second. “I don’t...it...it g-goes dark after...I’m sorry, I d-don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Jody leaned a little closer to him, taking his hand and offering what wordless comfort she could.

“It’s okay,” Dean said. “Do you think, if we brought you back to that hotel in Muncie, you might remember?”

Sam wanted to object, because that was nine kinds of cruel. But they didn’t have a lot of other options, so he held his peace.

“I don’t...maybe,” he said. He squeezed Jody’s hand. “It’s...it’s worth a try, I guess.”

“Okay, then,” Dean said. “So, new plan--Cas, you take Dad, see if you can find Metatron’s locker. Maybe we’ll get lucky and, if he has the DVD, it’s with the rest.”

 _Maybe we’ll get_ really _lucky and he’s already fit those three pieces together,_ Sam thought. Unlikely, but it would be nice.

“Agreed,” Cas said. “And Nick will go to Muncie?”

Nick nodded.

“You should not go alone,” the angel said, frowning a little.

“Yeah.” Dean looked over at Sam.

 _Shit._ On the one hand, he probably made more sense to go with Nick than Dean did--if the resonance Dad had mentioned worked across more than one angel, better to send two ex-vessels on the off-chance they might run across some blood or whatever with trace Grace in it. Besides, he had more idea than any of the others what Nick might be going through, which meant he was probably the best option to pull him out of it if he shut down.

On the other hand, as much as he wished it wasn’t, as much as he _knew_ Nick was, deep down, a decent person, pretty damn far from Lucifer, it was hard enough dealing with him in a group. There was too much baggage, even when he could intellectually separate the two of them. To spend that much time _alone_ with him would be so much worse.

Besides. Someone had to stay behind and work Bela, and she’d already tried to kill Dean once. And there was still a lot of library research to do, and he was better at that.

“Maybe you should go,” Sam said, before he could talk himself into changing his mind again. “I’ll stay here, see what I can get out of Bela and the library.”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, okay. Jody, you wanna come with us, or stick around and help Sam?”

Jody considered for a minute, then looked up at Nick. “Your call, hon.”

Nick was quiet for a long moment, then took a deep breath and said, “I think you should stay and help Sam.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“All right,” Sam said. “You guys should all get going, then. Check in every three hours, okay?”

The others nodded, and headed for the garage, leaving him and Jody to try and handle Bela.

 

 


	30. Part 4, Chapter III

**III.**

 

Lucy--Bela--was right where they’d left her, still safe and secure, chained in her chair in the middle of a Devil’s Trap in the boys’ basement dungeon.

She looked up when the two of them came in, and smirked. “Let me guess. Something’s gone wrong?”

“What makes you say that?” Jody asked, leaning against one of the shelves while Sam paced the edges of the Trap. They’d decided on their strategy before going in. It was simple enough; Jody would do all the talking, while he’d stand there and be menacing and pissed the fuck off over what had happened.

Bela rolled her eyes. “Even before I was a demon, I was an excellent thief, one of the best. You think I don’t know how to read people?”

Jody shrugged one shoulder. “Does it really matter? Our questions haven’t changed.”

She smiled, all teeth. “We’ll see. Ask away, Sheriff.”

Something wasn’t right here, something that pinged off all of Jody’s instincts as an investigator. Still, letting this thread play out for a while might not be a bad plan. It wasn’t like any of the normal rules applied when a demon was involved anyway.

“What did Metatron give you to resurrect John Winchester?”

“Two hours with the demon tablet.”

 _That_ caught both of them by surprise. Not just the answer itself, but how _quickly_ she’d given it. Especially since, up ‘til now, she’d refused to even confirm she’d been involved with the resurrection at _all._

“No way,” Sam said, throwing their strategy out the window, and focusing on the first surprise, while Jody kept quiet, trying to unravel the second. “He wouldn’t’ve risked you keeping it long-term. And you didn’t _do_ anything with it.”

Bela rolled her eyes again. “Just because I failed to show off doesn’t mean I was idle. And I _couldn’t_ keep it long-term. It was a _deal._ There are _rules._ ” She paused. “Besides, Metatron built in his own fail-safe spell. Even if I had attempted to violate the terms of our agreement somehow, I wouldn’t have been able to hold it. As you so implied, Metatron is not stupid. And neither am I.”

“All right,” Jody said. “Say we believe you. What _did_ you use the tablet for?” _And why are you suddenly cooperative? What the hell is going_ on?

“I told you,” she said, “I’m a _thief._ I used it to remove and replace a series of wards protecting a valuable object.”

“What object?” he asked.

She smiled again. “Now, that would be telling. And it will cost you.”

Jody, however, had a pretty damn good idea what object, but she wasn’t about to give _that_ choice bit of intel away. Not yet.

 _Besides, timing aside--what the hell would_ she _want with the DVD?_

Unless she wanted the same thing they did--Gabriel’s Grace. But what could a demon do with Archangel juice, without accidentally smiting herself in the process? That was how it worked, right?

“Fine. Let’s backtrack, then. How did Metatron contact you?”

Bela rolled her eyes, and gave her a _well_ that _was a stupid question_ look. “Same way people always do?”

“So, you’re involved because...what, luck of the draw?”

“If you really think I’m going to explain to you how we determine which of us goes to which crossroads, you’re sadly mistaken.” She settled back in her chair. “Because, a, trade secrets, and b, incredibly long and boring discussion of metaphysics that would likely go over your head.”

 _Try me,_ Jody wanted to snark back, but they didn’t really have time and that wasn’t all that important at the moment, anyway. Sam and Dean had been able to summon specific individual demons before--or at least Crowley--so they probably knew a way. And the last thing Jody wanted was to stay involved in demon crap. She and Nick and the girls did _not_ need that.

“What about when the boys called you, about Nick?”

“I’ll admit to that one being deliberate,” Bela said, after a brief pause. “If only because we all knew who was behind the summons and no one else was exactly eager to get their ass kicked. I paid off the others in range to keep the King in the dark, and went to find out what they were fishing for.”

“Because you wanted something from them,” Jody said.

“Protection,” Sam added quietly.

Bela’s eyes flicked over to him. “Among other things,” she agreed.

“What other things?”

She smirked again. “You haven’t earned that answer yet, Sam. Sorry.”

“All right,” he said, after a minute. “If you want to play ball with us, if you want to stay close to Nick and work with us on the Darkness, why did you try to kill Dean?”

Her smirk faded and she glared at him. “First of all, you should _know_ why I don’t like him. Second of all, I wasn’t actually trying to kill him. Much.”

“You _strangled_ him.”

“Yes, but--look, if I’d _wanted_ to kill him, I’d have snapped his neck before Nick found us,” Bela said, annoyed. “I just wanted him to _suffer_ for a bit, for what he’d done to me. It was a mistake, one that risked my entire operation. I went into that conversation planning on telling him who I was and making a more specific bargain, and he’d completely _forgotten_ me, after everything he--” She broke off, took a deep breath, and shut her eyes. “He provoked me. I should not have risen to his bait. It was stupid, and it was petty. But, then again, I’m a demon, so I suppose pettiness comes with the territory.”

Sam and Jody exchanged a long look. She was probably lying; Jody knew that. People didn’t strangle other people without wanting them dead. Yeah, maybe Bela wanted Dean dead less than she wanted to pull off whatever it was she was trying to do. And, apparently, she needed Dean--or, at minimum, the cooperation of their group as a whole--in order to do it. But once she’d gotten what she wanted out of them...

“What do you want, then, Bela?” she asked quietly. “Why’d you stop and help Nick? Why the hell did you stay involved, after you figured out what Metatron was after?”

Bela glowered at her for a minute, then said, “I’m protecting my investment.”

“And saving your own skin,” Sam said.

“Can you blame me?” She shook her head. “Yes, I had other plans, when Metatron first offered me use of the tablet. No, I am not going to tell you what those plans were. It no longer matters, anyway, because once he taught me how to access its power, everything _changed._ Holding the tablet gave me a glimpse--just a glimpse--of what Amara would do to the world. I rather like the world. I’d like to keep living in it.” She paused, then shrugged. “For a given definition of ‘living,’ anyway.”

And _now,_ Jody decided, was the moment to bring the theft into play. She carefully pretended surprise, standing a little straighter and letting her eyes widen. “ _You_ have Gabriel’s Grace,” she said.

From the short, sharp breath beside her, she was pretty sure Sam hadn’t worked that out until she mentioned it. “Of _course,_ ” he muttered, just on the edge of too quiet to hear.

 _Good thing I stuck around,_ she thought. _Because you boys may know demons, but_ I _know_ thieves.

There was a flash of something like triumph in the demon’s eyes, and she sat up a little straighter in her chair. “I stole the DVD months ago, yes.”

“Where is it?” Sam asked.

“Tsk, tsk,” she said. “It doesn’t work like that, Sam. It never has.” She smirked at them. “Now, then. All our cards are on the table, so to speak. Let’s talk deal.”

Jody reached over and put a restraining hand on Sam’s shoulder. He backed down, letting her do the talking. “What do you want?”

“What do you have to offer?”

She looked over at Sam, who looked...conflicted. And she couldn’t really blame him. Because there wasn’t much they could offer Bela except her freedom, which would leave her free to come after them again.

On the other hand, Bela had Gabriel’s Grace. They needed that to get rid of the Darkness. To save the entire goddamned _world._

Jody had gotten petty crooks to flip on bigger fish before. She didn’t like doing it, but it was just the way things worked sometimes. It wasn’t any easier to stomach when the stakes were higher.

Sam tried a half-measure first. “We let you out of the cell. But the cuffs stay on.”

Bela snorted. “I’ll have to fetch the DVD, you know. I don’t want to wander around outside the wards, unable to defend myself.”

“One of us’ll go with you. We’ll hash out who when the others get back.”

“What, so you can kill me as soon as I’ve given up my leverage?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“You said it yourself,” he said. “Your host hasn’t taken a fatal wound. We can’t kill you without killing her, too. And we don’t _do_ that anymore.”

Bela sighed. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust your word. Or your good intentions. The King aside, they have a tendency to fall through before too long.”

Jody shifted slightly. She knew, sort of vaguely, that Sam and Dean occasionally worked with Crowley, despite--well, everything. But it was one thing to know it, and another to _hear_ it explicitly.

Sam glanced over at her, then flushed and looked away.

“Ah, I see I’ve struck a nerve there,” Bela said, leaning forward.

 _Damn it,_ Jody thought. She was better than this, how the hell could she have let that much slip, give the demon the upper hand?

“Not really,” she said, with as much casualness as she could muster. “I get it. I’m a _cop,_ remember? I know damn well the world ain’t a simple place. Intentions or otherwise, sometimes you have to make the bad deal. And when you add monsters into the mix…” She shrugged.

She almost believed it, when she said it out loud. Because it _was_ true, and she knew it was true. But at the same time...well, knowing what she knew didn’t make it any easier when she was the one who’d gotten hurt, and her friends were the ones making the bad deal.

“Well, it’s not like we can trust your word, either,” Sam said. “Since you’ve lied to us from the beginning and you strangled my brother.”

“Then we’re at an impasse,” Bela said coolly. “You don’t get the DVD unless I get, at a bare minimum, an unconditional release.”

Sam glared at her for a long moment, then turned on his heel and stalked out.

Jody kept her frustration off her face as best she could, and followed him, resisting the urge to let out some sort of parting shot. It wouldn’t solve anything, it wouldn’t even really make her feel better, and chances were it would just give Bela more ammunition.

 _I really hope the others are having more luck than we are,_ she thought, _because right now, we are_ screwed.

 


	31. Part 4, Chapter IV

**IV.**

 

It was raining when Dean and Nick got to what was left of the Elysian Fields motel--not like it had been when Sam and Dean had been here before, but a thin, miserably cold, dripping drizzle. It looked like the place hadn’t been touched since Lucifer had cleaned it out. Good and bad; on the one hand, more likely to trigger some sort of memory for Nick. On the other…well, more likely to trigger some kind of memory for Nick.

On the plus side, it was on the opposite side of town from where Metatron had stabbed him. So at least one of them should be able to keep his head in there. Hopefully. Fingers crossed, anyway.

“You ready?” Dean asked.

Nick shrugged his good shoulder. “Don’t think I really can be, not for this.” Which was more than he’d said the entire drive up here.

“Yeah, I hear that,” he said. He held out a gun for Nick to borrow.

“Uh...you know I don’t actually know how to use that, right?” he said.

“Fair enough,” he said, putting the gun back in the trunk. “But grab something. Might be a bad idea to go in there unarmed.”

Nick flinched, but didn’t argue. After a brief hesitation, he picked up a crowbar.

 _Good enough._ Dean grabbed a pair of flashlights, then shut the trunk, locked it, and led the way towards the door.

It stuck a little--he had to ram it a couple times before it fell open--but it wasn’t locked.

Inside was pretty much exactly how he remembered it. A little mustier, smelling like dust and mold and--huh. Not like rotting bodies.

_Someone cleaned up._

“Kali,” Nick breathed.

“What?”

He jumped. “Sorry. I just...uh, there...there should be...bodies here. Kali must’ve...must have circled back.”

“Yeah.” Not like anyone else would’ve done it, anyway. “Come on, conference room’s this way.”

“I know.”

They continued on in silence, picking their way through the lobby and hanging a left down the hallway towards where Gabriel died. Kali--or whoever had cleaned up--may have gotten rid of the bodies, but hadn’t bothered to wash the gore off the walls. Dean kept his flashlight off the spatter as much as possible. He knew there weren’t any actual ghosts here--he’d gone over the place with EMF before letting Nick in--but the place still felt haunted. Metaphorically, skin-crawlingly haunted. Empty like a mausoleum, still coated in gore, and Dean couldn’t quite shake the feeling that they were being watched.

Nick, beside him, just kept moving. If he’d picked up on Dean’s uneasiness, or was feeling the same sort of pressure, he kept it to himself.

Still, despite the increasing creep factor, the two of them reached the conference room without any actual problems.

“Ready?” Dean asked Nick again.

He jumped, but nodded once.

When he didn’t move any further, Dean went ahead and pushed the door open.

The conference room was almost exactly as they had left it. The tables had been blown off to the side, and there were scorch marks through the carpet.

Wing-shaped scorch marks.

Other than the burns, though, there was a hell of a lot less gore than the rest of the building, just a single stain where Lucifer had dropped Baldur.

Nick stared down at that stain for a long moment, his fingers twitching, mouthing something Dean couldn’t quite catch.

“You getting anything?” Dean asked, after that moment of silence had stretched uncomfortably long.

He didn’t answer, turning slowly in place to face the door, his eyes drifting shut.

 _...fuck, is he actually_ reliving _what Lucifer did? Fuck, fuck, fuck_ \--and, okay, yeah, maybe that would get them what they needed, or maybe he’d snap or fall apart the way Sam had after his wall broke, which would solve _nothing._

_At least he only has a crowbar, and doesn’t know how to actually hurt anyone with it. I’ll be able to lock him down quicker if that happens._

Not that that was _really_ a plus, but-- _fuck._

Dean hesitated for a second, trying to decide whether or not he should try and snap Nick out of it. But before he could do anything, Nick’s eyes drifted open again and he slumped to one side, putting a hand out to the closer table for balance.

“You okay?”

“Ow.”

“Guess not.” _Could be worse, though._ He went over to offer a shoulder to lean on, and Nick didn’t push him away. “Anything?”

Nick shook his head, then winced and brought his good hand up to massage his temples. “Not...not yet. I didn’t...I think I was...I’ll try again, I-I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath, looked up, and froze.

“Nick?” Dean turned to see what had freaked him out, and saw--nothing. “Nick, what?”

Nick let go and bolted for the door.

“Hey, wait--!”

Nick got about two paces before he abruptly stopped and crumpled to the ground.

“Fuck!”

“He’s just sleeping,” a voice from behind him said.

Dean whirled, bringing his gun to bear on--

“ _...Gabriel?_ ”

The Archangel, perched on one of the tables, quirked a little half smile. “Hiya, Dean. Long time no see.”

“...this can’t be real.”

“What, ‘cause I’m dead?”

“For starters.” He knew it wouldn’t do any good, but he kept his gun up anyway. “The hell did you do to Nick?”

“I told you, he’s sleeping.” Gabriel got up off the table, and made a face. “He wasn’t actually supposed to see me. He panicked. Didn’t feel like dealing with it right then, so I knocked him out. Relax, he’ll be fine.”

“Right.” Dean studied the Archangel, trying to figure out what the hell to ask first. “How the hell are you alive?”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “Magic, duh.”

Dean stared at him.

Gabriel just grinned and refused to elaborate.

“Where the hell have you been the past few years, then? We sorta could’ve used you once or twice.”

He pulled another face. “Yeah, I know.”

“...and?”

“I wasn’t exactly in a position to do much. Piecing myself together took a while, you know.”

Dean opened his mouth to push the point, but decided it wasn’t worth it. They had bigger problems, anyway. “What did you mean, he wasn’t supposed to see you?”

“I don’t wanna have to repeat myself.” He shrugged. “I spotted you two heading this way, figured I’d go invisible, follow you back to your secret base, then talk one of you guys into letting me in.”

Okay, nice to know the security on the bunker actually worked. “You can’t just break in?”

“Well, I _could,_ ” he said. “But then all and sundry could follow me in, ‘cause the wards would be _down._ Plus, it would make a hell of a lot of noise and I’m kinda trying to stay off the radar, you know?”

“Okay.” Dean hesitated. “...are we gonna have to have another heart to heart in my backseat again, or are you planning on helping us out?”

“I _said_ I was angling for an invitation, didn’t I?” Gabriel said. Ignoring the gun, he went over to Nick and picked him up. “So, are we heading out or what?”

“I still have questions.”

“You can ask me on the road, you know,” the Archangel pointed out.

“How do I know you’re really who you say you are? Cas--”

“What happened with Castiel,” Gabriel interrupted, icy and sharp, “is no longer a problem.”

“So that _was_ you.”

“Can we just go? Talk about this later?”

“Fine,” Dean said, and headed for the door.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “ _Finally,_ ” he muttered.

He made a face, and led his way back to the car, wondering how the hell he was supposed to explain _this_ mess to the others.

 

 


	32. Part 4, Chapter V

**V.**

 

Dean had planned to grill Gabriel about--well, pretty much _everything_ on the drive back to Lebanon, but the Archangel piled into the backseat with Nick and put up some kind of soundproof barrier, preventing him from talking to either of them.

Of course, given Nick’s history and the way he’d reacted to seeing Gabriel, Dean wasn’t all that sure he would’ve wanted to listen in on that particular conversation anyway. Still, it would have been nice to get some damned answers on his own.

Whatever went down between the two of them, though, by the time Gabriel took down the barrier about ten minutes away from the bunker, Nick was a hell of a lot calmer than Dean had ever seen him.

 _Silver lining,_ he thought. And he had at least a little time to try and get some more details.

“So, where the hell have you been?” he started.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Like I said, putting myself back together. And getting away from Kali.” He shrugged. “Faking my death took a crapload of energy, and she still had a link to my body. And she was _pissed,_ let me tell you.”

Okay, fair enough. “What about when Cas saw you? Was that actually you?”

He didn’t answer right away. “Ish,” he finally said.

“Ish?”

“Yeah. Ish. So, tell me where you all are at with the Darkness,” he said. “What have you got so far?”

“No, you don’t get to dodge this time,” Dean said. _Besides, I don’t know exactly what we have until we get back and talk to Dad and Cas._ “Did you talk to Cas or not?”

“I told you. Ish. But believe me, when I get my hands on Metatron…” Gabriel trailed off, but Dean could practically taste his rage hanging in the air.

 _Oh, crap._ “Metatron’s dead,” he said.

Gabriel went still. Beside him, Nick tensed and inched as far away as he could. “Is he, now.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “But now that you’re around, we don’t need what he knows anymore.”

“ _I_ need him,” Gabriel snapped. “I need to wring his scrawny little _neck._ He _bound_ me!”

 _Oh,_ crap. “Yeah, well, Dad beat you to it,” he said. “And _no one’s_ happy about that, believe me.” _Although I guess we can rule out Gabriel for being responsible for Dad coming back. If he had, sounds like he wouldn’t have handed him over to freaking Metatron. Hopefully Jody and Sam can get_ something _out of Bela._

Gabriel started to say something, then shook his head and just muttered something in what sounded like Enochian that made Nick’s eyes go wide.

“You understood that?” Dean asked.

“I know it was a lot of swearing,” he said. He looked deeply uncomfortable with that knowledge, and, considering where he’d probably gotten it, Dean couldn’t really blame him.

“Something like that,” Gabriel said. “Also, Dean, I need my DVD back. It’s not all of my Grace, but enough to make a difference.”

 _Crap._ “Uh. About that.”

“...what part of _guard this with your life_ did you not understand?”

“I thought it was safe!” Dean insisted. “Something got past my wards and stole it.”

Gabriel muttered more Enochian swear words and turned to stare sullenly out the window.

They drove the rest of the way in and parked in silence. Dad’s truck was in the garage, which meant he and Cas had gotten back.

 _Hopefully_ they _got what they were after,_ Dean thought. Not that he and Nick had exactly _failed,_ but…

When they got inside, they found the others all gathered in the library. There was a duffel bag on the table between them, which hopefully meant Cas and Dad had found what they were looking for.

 _No one died, at least,_ Dean thought, remembering what Cas had told them about the risks.

Sam looked up and froze when he saw the Archangel following them. “ _Gabriel?_ ” he finally managed to get out.

“Hiya, Sam,” he replied, with a wave and a grin. “And I’m guessing you’re Jody Mills.”

“Uh, hi,” she said. She looked a little thrown. “That’s me.”

“Seems like we’ve got a lot to talk about,” Sam said.

“Yeah, a bit,” Dean said.

Gabriel, in the meantime, had turned his focus on John, and was once again radiating rage. “Metatron,” he said quietly, “was _mine._ ”

John stiffened and glared right back. “Who the hell--”

“There’s a good chance I’ll need you,” the Archangel interrupted. “But when we’re done with Amara, you and I are gonna have _words._ ”

Sam cleared his throat and tried to get between the two of them. “Guys, speaking of Amara…”

Some of the tension in the air eased. Only some of it, though.

“Exactly,” Gabriel said, wandering over and snapping himself up a chair. “So, where are we at?”

“We were able to retrieve the ashes and the salt,” Cas said. “Will we need the DVD, even though you’re here?”

“It’ll help,” Gabriel said, guarded. “We can probably manage without it, but any extra power would be a good thing.”

“Bela stole it,” Jody put in. “She won’t tell us where, but she does have it.”

“Good,” Gabriel said, relaxing. “I’ll talk to her when we finish up here. She’ll give it to me, I promise.”

“We don’t know what to do with any of the Grace, though,” Sam said. “Or how to pull it out. Except what Nick has and that...um...that ended badly.”

“Is there any other way to keep the needle from shattering?” Nick asked, looking almost painfully hopeful.

“Not...really. More trouble than it’s worth, and kind of counter-productive anyway, since each fragment needs to be manipulated by an actual person,” Gabriel said. “What we’re gonna do should burn up all the rest, though, so there’s that.”

“Okay,” Nick said. He didn’t look particularly happy about it, but he nodded anyway.

“Probably safer to leave the ashes and the salt where they are, too,” he said. “Less dangerous to the person handling it.”

“Makes sense,” Dean said. One less problem we need to solve, at least.

“So, we need to figure out who’s gonna stand for the others. Plus we probably need an anchor point, a way to draw Amara out, and some way to secure a perimeter so no one gets in the way. Limit distractions, you know? And collateral,” Gabriel added, as an afterthought.

Dean shifted uncomfortably. _Shit. Shit shit shit._ “I...uh, I may be able to draw her out.” He glanced over at Sam, who looked unhappy but--not actually all that surprised.

He did _not_ look at Dad, but he could sort of guess what _he_ was feeling.

“Yeah?” Gabriel said.

“When we, uh...when she got released, she talked to me. She has a couple times since then. She told me...she said there’s a, uh...a bond between us.”

Gabriel studied him for a long moment, but didn’t press. “Okay, so there’s that. I guess he can stand in for Michael then,” he said, pointing at Dad, “which leaves Raph and the anchor point. Cas, you and Bela good to watch our backs?”

“Wait, we’re bringing Bela in?” Getting her to hand over the DVD was one thing, but...

“You got a better idea?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “How about _not_ bringing her in?”

“The more people watching our backs, the better,” Gabriel pointed out. “Plus, the symmetry is nice. Heaven and Hell united. Ish.”

“She tried to kill me!”

“Yeah? But, I mean, who _hasn’t?_ I know _I_ have. Pretty sure Cas did, back when he went off the rails. And that’s just the people in this room,” Gabriel pointed out. “Come on, Dean. You’ve worked with people who want your ass dead before, with enough justification. I don’t know about you, but in _my_ book, my freaking aunt is _more_ than enough of a threat to inspire you to rise above.”

Okay, Gabriel did sort of have a point there. Bela was just the person who’d tried to kill him most recently--or, tried to kill _specifically_ him, not just ‘the hunter who happened to come after me’ sort of trying to kill him. And he didn’t really question working with either of the angels. Even Gabriel who, if Sam hadn’t just gone on a weird-ass acid trip, had killed him at least a hundred times once. And assuming Gabriel could get Bela to play fair--or at least as fair as Meg had ever played, when they had worked with her--Cas having someone to watch his back sounded like a _very_ good idea.

“Fine,” he said. “Then who stands for Raphael, and what goes into being the anchor?”

“Anchor’s basically gonna tie the rest of us together,” Gabriel said. “Keep us from drifting too far into the void, losing ourselves or each other. Sam’s probably the best choice for that.”

He blinked. “Uh. I am?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re still a pretty bright and shiny soul, despite everything. Makes for a good beacon. Plus, you’ve got a pretty strong connection, metaphysically speaking, to each of the rest of us. And it doesn’t exactly hurt that you descend from multiple vessel lines. Dean would work, too, but we need him to play bait.”

“Huh,” Sam said. “Uh, okay, then.”

Jody cleared her throat. “Guess that means I stand in for Raphael?”

Nick tensed up. “But--but you’re not a vessel. You’ll…”

“It’ll be okay,” Gabriel assured him. “She’s not _actually_ going to get possessed. As long as Sam and I can keep all the energies balanced, the backlash won’t kill her.”

He didn’t look all that reassured, and Dean was sort of on his side.

“Oh, come on, guys, stop with the doom and gloom looks,” Gabriel said, impatient. “You humans are more resilient than you give yourselves credit for. As long as the rest of us do our freaking jobs, Jody ain’t in any more danger of exploding than the rest of you. Actually, _less_ danger, in Nick’s case, since he’s already damaged and she’s intact. Okay?”

Nick looked over at Jody.

“I don’t like it either, honey,” she said. “But it’s not like we can go hunt down a better placeholder.”

“I know,” he finally said.

“Okay, then,” she said, a little too brightly. “That’s all settled. How do we make this work?”

“First, I talk to Bela, get my DVD and get her on board to help Cas,” Gabriel said. “Then, we figure out where to do this, and I lay the groundwork. Easiest place would be somewhere we don’t have to fight through someone else’s wards, or do a lot of purification-type prepwork. I’ve got a couple locations already keyed to me as Loki, which’ll make it easier. I can take us all there.”

“And then?” Nick asked. He and Jody were holding hands, tight.

“I’ll tell you where to stand, Jody and John take their pieces, Dean summons Amara, and you follow my lead from there,” Gabriel says. “Any questions?”

No one had any, or at least any they were willing to ask.

 _It all sounds so freaking easy,_ Dean thought. He knew it wouldn’t be. He knew _something_ would go wrong. Something always did.

“All right, then,” the Archangel said. “Soon as I get what I need from Bela, we’re on.”

 


	33. Part 4, Chapter VI

**VI.**

 

When Gabriel had mentioned places already keyed to him as Loki, Sam was a little worried they’d have to head all the way to freaking Europe, or at least Newfoundland. Since Gabriel, like every other angel, had lost his wings to Metatron, that would have been a potentially major problem.

But, as it turned out, Gabriel had safehouses set up all over the world, with the closest one being up in the mountains in South Dakota. So, not only was it reasonably close, Nick and Jody were able to stop to check in with Claire and Alex on the way. Cas and Bela, in the meantime, had gone to retrieve Gabriel’s DVD. Sam, Dean, and Dad had stayed with Gabriel.

By the time the others joined them, Gabriel was nearly done setting up the spell. He’d spent about an hour circling the space, making minute adjustments to the wards, then shoved all the furniture out of the way and started carving the foundations for his spell into the floor. Sam recognized about a third of the sigils; a third were completely unfamiliar; and the rest gave him a slightly nauseating sense of foreboding.

“So, is this a copy of what you did with her before?” Dean asked. He’d been fidgeting on the edge of the room, trying to stay out of the way but more visibly nervous than either Sam or Dad was.

“Mostly,” Gabriel said. “I’m modifying it some. We only have one actual Archangel, so I’ve gotta compensate for that. And, if this works, the key will be bound to a physical object, rather than a person. Less chance of anyone getting corrupted and going off the rails that way.”

Like Cain and Dean had. Good plan.

Cas, followed by Bela, joined the four of them. “We have it,” he said.

“Awesome,” Gabriel said, standing up and brushing rock dust from his carving off his pants. “Gimme.”

Bela, still handcuffed because none of them were stupid, rolled her eyes, and tossed it to the Archangel, underhanded, while Cas examined Gabriel’s work.

“Okay, unless you wanna go blind, all humans and demons shut your eyes,” Gabriel said.

Sam did as asked, and heard a crack, followed by a high-pitched angelic shriek, as Gabriel snapped the DVD in half and reabsorbed the leftover Grace.

“...that’s it?” Dean asked, beside Sam.

“For me, anyway,” Gabriel said. “ _Damn,_ that feels good.”

Sam cautiously opened his eyes in time to see Nick and Jody finally arrive.

“Awesome, we’re all here,” Gabriel said. “Cas, anything you want to add to the circle?”

He looked up, and shook his head. “No, everything seems to overlap correctly.”

“Okay.” He snapped his fingers, and Bela’s cuffs vanished. “You two, get into position. Try not to let Amara see you.”

Angel and demon both nodded, and brushed past Nick and Jody to leave the room.

“Where do you want the rest of us?” Jody asked.

“First, I need blood from each of you,” he said. “Except Dean.”

Sam saw Dad stiffen, and he couldn’t exactly blame him. Handing over blood to a powerful entity that had made his hostility abundantly clear was a dangerous move.

Gabriel stared at John, raising an eyebrow. “You in this or not?”

“Fine,” Dad said, pulling out a knife and cutting into his palm.

The rest of them followed suit. Gabriel, carefully keeping the blood samples separated, put a few drops at key points in the circle: Nick’s went in the east, Dad’s in the west, and Jody’s in the south. He also mixed a couple drops of Jody’s blood with the Raphael salt. “To help you key into it properly,” he said.

Sam’s blood went in the center. “Okay, Sam, this might feel a little weird,” Gabriel said, then touched the spilled blood and muttered something in Enochian.

‘Weird’ was one hell of an understatement.

It didn’t hurt, exactly, but every part of him felt like it was vibrating, like thousands of shivering, beating wings. And he was sort of seeing--not double, this wasn’t seeing double, more like he was seeing the room from two different perspectives; looking at himself looking at himself looking at himself looking--

It was slightly nauseating. He swallowed and closed his eyes, which helped a little. And, after a few seconds, the buzzing quieted down to a bearable level; or maybe he just got used to it. Sort of like when the pain from the Trials spell faded after he invoked it, that same sort of drop in intensity, only this wasn’t really _pain._

_I really, really hope this doesn’t fuck me up like the Trials did._

“Sam?” Dean asked.

“I’m okay,” he said, then cleared his throat.

“Open your eyes,” Gabriel said. “I need to make sure it worked.”

Sam did as asked, more than a little reluctantly. He was once again hit by that unsettling dual-perspective, looking straight into Gabriel’s eyes and also at the back of his head.

“Awesome. Okay, you can close your eyes again if you want, I know it’s probably weird for a human.”

“What did you do to him?” Dean asked.

“Uh, long metaphysical explanation that basically boils down to: he needs to be at the center of the circle to anchor the rest of us, but I don’t want to accidentally bind him with Amara,” Gabriel said. “So, I did some magic that lets him be in both places at once, so we can hone in on his soul, but it’s not _really_ there, so he’s shielded from the effects of the spell.”

“And when we’re done, it’ll wear off?” Sam asked.

“Not on its own,” Gabriel said. “But I’ll reverse it when we’re done.”

 _Assuming you survive,_ Sam thought unhappily. But, then again, if Gabriel _didn’t_ survive this mess, this stupid fucking disorienting thing would probably be the _least_ of their problems. “Okay,” he said, and backed up until he felt the wall before sitting down. “Am I good here?” If he couldn’t see right, he wanted something solid at his back. Just in case.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” he said. “Okay, the rest of you, take positions around the circle, cardinal directions where I put your blood,” Gabriel said.

Sam heard the others moving for a few seconds, then stillness.

“All right, Dean,” Gabriel said quietly. “You’re up.”

“Uh.” Dean cleared his throat. “Do I have to...is there any special way to summon her?”

“If you’re bonded like she told you, just calling for her will get her attention. Circle’s set for her to snap into it once she’s in range.”

“Right. Okay.” Sam heard his brother draw in a deep, shaky breath. “Amara,” he said. “It’s...uh, it’s me. Dean Winchester. I want to talk. I want to hear what you’ve got planned. Okay?”

For a long moment, nothing happened, and then Sam felt a cool wind rush over him, and then a soft, almost sad voice said, “Hello, Dean.”

“Amara,” he breathed, and there was a twisted mix of longing and revulsion in the word, one that felt uncomfortably familiar to Sam.

_It had to be you, Sam. It always had to be you._

He shivered, and did his best to push that memory far, _far_ away.

Some part of him wondered if Nick recognized that feeling, too.

“You said you wanted to talk,” Amara said. “But you lied to me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Sam could tell he meant it, as much as he didn’t want to.

He heard Amara shift, and there was something sharper, less sad and more angry, in her tone when she spoke again. “Hello, Gabriel.”

Rather than answering her, Gabriel spoke a word--a single word--in Enochian.

A burning-hot light pressed against Sam’s eyelids as the spell took shape both around him and next to him all at once.

He took a deep breath, focused on the thin, thready voices of his friends around and in front of him, and grimly held on for dear life.

 


	34. Part 4, Chapter VII

**VII.**

 

Everything was burning.

For a long moment, that was all John could feel. Burning, and light, and an icy, consuming darkness at the heart of everything. It wasn’t pain, exactly--more like a frenetic ecstasy that beckoned him closer, threatening to shatter any hold he had on reality.

Slowly, slowly, achingly slowly, other sensations returned.

Somewhere beneath him, John could feel Sam, solid and rock-steady. If he was afraid, there was no obvious tell. That was a start; that was a foundation. He could work with that, use that to try and separate all the other threads of raw _feeling_ pressing in around him.

He knew Dean was off in the distance somewhere, but John had lost track of him, and he couldn’t afford to try and find him again. He focused everything on the lines of burning light running between him and Gabriel and Cross and Mills and the endless, gaping void between them.

Cross, directly opposite him in the east, was flickering madly, like a candle in a hurricane; Mills in the south was dim, so dim he could barely see her, but miraculously holding steady. Gabriel, of course, outshone them all.

The void whirled; shrieked in impotent rage, clawing at the web they were weaving. John could hear Gabriel in the north, murmuring something in Enochian. In the east, hesitant and full of pain, Cross started to echo the Archangel. John started to join in--not knowing the words, but not really _needing_ to, swept up in the web of light with Sam as a foundation to keep him from losing all grip on reality.

 _Focus. Focus, you can’t just get swept away, you have to make damned_ sure _this doesn’t collapse around you._

And, for a moment, John felt like it wouldn’t collapse, like the web was doing it’s fucking job, like everything was actually _working._ For a moment, he let the optimism fill him--a weird feeling; it had been a damned long time since he had felt this much hope; he’d almost forgotten what it was like.

But then Cross’s pain was pulsing around him, not enough to warp the spell, but enough to make it shiver, it was almost-- _almost_ \--overwhelming, and John felt that mad optimism start to dissipate; and Mills was barely holding on in a different way, getting lost in everything, drowning between the rest of them, and he thought--wait.

_What if there’s another way?_

Maybe, just maybe, he had that chance, to fix what had gone wrong the first time the Darkness had been bound. He was strong enough to resist the taint. He knew he was. He wasn’t like Cain, who hadn’t known _anything_ before making his bargain. He might not know as much as he would like to about angels, or Archangels, or the void in the center of the web, but he knew damn well how much his mind and soul could take. They could take this. He was strong enough.

And if he couldn’t?

If he couldn’t, if he became another Cain--how could that be worse than the others’ weakness damaging the web, failing it completely? If he didn’t take control, if he didn’t change the game, Amara would break free again. She would shatter Cross, devour Mills, and then come after his boys. And Gabriel--the last, lone Archangel, fractured and bitter without his brothers--would never be able to stand up to her. Not alone. He would die, and there would be no hope left for the world without him. Everything John and his boys had fought for, this entire unwanted second chance at life he’d been given, all of it would be for _nothing,_ if he let Cross and Mills fail. In the end, another Cain would be a damned sight better than Amara left free.

_Yes._

Yes, he could do this. He _had_ to do this.

John filtered the ashes through his fingers, narrowed his focus away from Sam, away from Cross and Mills and Gabriel; he counted his breaths, tightened his grip on the web, and _pulled._

_John, NO! STOP!_

Gabriel’s voice echoed in his head, but he ignored it.

The void paused, and pulsed, and wove towards him.

Dimly, at the edge of his mind, he thought he heard someone screaming.

For a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw the void _smile._

But then, before he could make sense of any it, he fell into the web, and all he knew was light.

 

 


	35. Part 4, Chapter VIII

**VIII.**

 

For a few seconds, Dean wasn’t sure what the hell had happened. There was screaming, a lot of screaming, and a pulse of something like satisfaction at the itchy corner of his brain, and then suddenly the room was bright, full of light like a naked angel.

And then Dad was gone, and Amara was--

 _Dean!_ Gabriel’s voice echoed in his head. _Dean, don’t think, just move--Dean, the ashes, we need you. You gotta pull double-duty here, I’m sorry, Dean, I didn’t want to make you do this, but the ashes, pick them up,_ hurry, _I’m losing--I’m losing--_

Something had gone wrong. He didn’t know what--but Gabriel was right. He didn’t have time to try and piece together what the fuck was happening.

He dove for the ashes and as soon as he touched them, he was buffered on all sides by a singing, joyous light.

This wasn’t--this wasn’t like any meeting with any angel had been, ever. This wasn’t even like Heaven. It sure as hell wasn’t like his bond with Amara had been, sinuous and invasive and all-consuming. Except that it was just as complete, just as intense; he locked into the wheel, with Sam watching their backs, keeping them real and alive, their axle; and standing in Michael’s place, completing a circle of mostly-fake Archangels, felt like shoving a dislocated joint back into place.

It felt _right._

He could _feel_ Jody, as intimately as if they were his own feelings; feel her exhaustion, her fear--her fragile core, just like Bela had warned him. But he could also feel her boundless capacity for hope, for love, for moving forward; her sheer balls-to-the-wall determination and loyalty and _love_ for her family, both the one she’d lost and the new one she’d built up over the years so she could go on living.

And Nick--he could feel Nick, just as intense; a tangled web of pain and guilt and grief and bitter, simmering rage; rage at the world that had destroyed him and his family, at Lucifer for preying on him when he was already dying inside, at himself for not being good enough, bright enough, just not being _enough._ But under the pain, under all that, was the softer side of that loss, the buried, shadowed memories of the joy he’d once known, and a willingness--a _need_ to do better, to make up for what he’d done wrong. His genuine love and admiration for Jody and, more important, a faint spring of _hope,_ still shining even in the most desolate corners of his soul, that even Lucifer hadn’t been able to freeze over and kill.

Gabriel--what he felt from Gabriel, he couldn’t put into words. The Archangel was all of them and none of them, utterly alien and yet exactly the same, full of that pain that grief that weary resignation; hope and love and faith (was Dean supposed to be faith, if the others were hope and love?)

Dean could feel all of them, like three other personalities inside his skin; he found himself mirrored there, and knew they saw themselves in him, four quarters of one purpose, made whole for the first time in _eons._

_Is this what it would have felt like, if I’d said yes?_

No answer came. He didn’t really expect one, anyway.

Gabriel was speaking, he could feel the pressure of the Enochian chant on the back of his mind. Jody, on his other side, was whispering the same words in counterpoint. Nick, faltering, joined in, and Dean closed his eyes and spoke.

 _I am not your toy,_ he told Amara, his own thoughts harmonizing with the spell Gabriel was weaving. _You’re right. You’re right, I wouldn’t have been able to kill you. But I am stronger than you. I am_ better _than you. Maybe I can’t kill you, but I can_ bind _you again. And maybe--maybe when we fall out of this link, when I go back to being just me in just my head, I’ll hate myself for locking you away like this, for locking away the part of me that’s mirrored in you. But this is_ my _world, and_ you can’t have it.

Amara pulsed in the middle of Gabriel’s web, pressed in on his mind, yanked on their bond, but somehow--somehow, miraculously, he _held._

With one last, defiant shriek, she compressed into center of the web, which shone bright and pure around her, binding her fast. The ashes, now a solid mass, slipped from his hand and then Dean, still safely linked to the others, his brother at his back as always, lost consciousness.

 


	36. Part 4, Chapter IX

**IX.**

 

It was over. They’d done it.

Bela had disappeared, sometime before Dean woke up. Cas was limping and bloodied, but refused to say anything of the battles they’d fought.

The rest of them had all made it out alive, at least. Jody would have scars wrapped around her body on her left side, climbing up her chin and cheek like lightning, but Gabriel was working to heal the actual burns before she was even conscious enough outside the meld to realize she was in pain.

All of them had pretty much collapsed once the meld died. Even Sam, who looked about like he’d been hit by a truck, but wouldn’t be scarred the way Jody was.

Nick had been right across from Dad when...when. Staring right into that explosion, he’d lost his eyes, just like Pamela had to Cas all those years ago. He’d been in and out, clinging like a burr to Jody’s side, taking the time to call Alex and Claire every time he woke.

Whatever wounds Gabriel might have taken were not in evidence by the time the rest of them woke up.

And as for Dean…

He wasn’t sure how he felt. Hell, he still wasn’t even really sure what had _happened._ He wasn’t hurt--he’d been insulated from whatever the hell had gone wrong--just tired, and empty, and aching with loss.

“But it worked, right?” Sam asked Gabriel, the second morning after the spell, once everyone was safe back in the bunker. “Amara’s--the Darkness is gone?”

“Trapped, yeah,” Gabriel said. “With physical keys this time.” He showed them a bag, embroidered all over with gold sigils, containing four rings; simple, solid-colored bands: one gold, one red, one pale blue, and one green.

Sam stiffened a little, looking at them. “So _that’s_ what the rest of them were.”

“Thought you’d ask sooner,” he said, then shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah, I drew some of the spellwork from how we built the Cage. I figured four physical keys was a better plan than just one that had to be tied to a person. Plus, these I can scatter all over the universe--this plane, anyway, I’m pretty sure some of the spellwork will unravel if I take them to Heaven or someplace.”

Dean nodded a little. That made sense. It wasn’t a _permanent_ solution, but it was probably better than the original one. And that one had held up for _how_ many eons?

“Once I’m finished fixing Jody, I’ll hide them,” Gabriel went on.

 _Good._ If the last Archangel was good at anything, he was good at hiding crap. It would be _forever_ before anyone found the damn things.

“What about…” Sam paused, cleared his throat, then finally asked the question they’d all been dancing around since waking up. “What about Dad?”

Gabriel shook his head. “He’s...he got pretty thoroughly consumed. I looked for traces, pulled on feelers I have in Heaven and Hell--even checked some contacts in Faerie and Purgatory, but…”

_Damn. Damn, damn, damn._

“So...he’s just...gone?” Sam asked. “Like, forever and always, no-more-soul, _gone?_ ”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Well, I mean, metaphysics ain’t all that different from actual physics. Life--souls, essence, whatever the fuck--can’t be created or destroyed. You could probably find pieces of him in the Empty.”

 _Which no one ever comes back from,_ Dean thought gloomily.

“But, practically speaking...yeah, I’m sorry. I don’t think he’s ever coming back again. I don’t think even if I had all my brothers with me, and all four of us tried really hard and didn’t devolve into stabbing each other again...sorry, lost track of that. Actually, I’m just sorry in general.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Dean said woodenly. They’d made their peace with Dad’s death before. They could do it again. It was just...hard.

Gabriel studied him for a minute, then nodded. “I’m gonna go work on Jody some more. You have any more questions, you know where to find me.”

“What about after?” Sam said.

“After what?”

“After we all go our separate ways, or whatever,” he clarified. “Are you going back to Heaven, or…?”

“Let me worry about that,” Gabriel said.

“Are you going to start killing people again?” Dean asked. He really, _really_ didn’t want to think they’d just bound Amara, lost Dad _again,_ and let Bela run free with who-the-fuck-knew what other intel or power from when Metatron loaned her the tablet…

Having to go hunt down Gabriel on top of all that wasn’t exactly the _worst_ case scenario, but it was pretty damned close.

The Archangel didn’t answer right away, but when he did, it was with obvious thought, rather than trying to weasel out of the answer. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I’m just...taking things as they come for now. I had a lot of time to think, when I was half-dead and when I was bound to Metatron. Plus, I’ve probably got some uncomfortable questions to answer upstairs. And they’ll _expect_ things from me…” He shook his head. “I’m just gonna go fix Jody, then hide these rings, okay? Don’t ask me for anything more. Not yet.”

Dean thought about saying something, but finally just nodded. It would do, for now. They owed Gabriel enough for stepping up, both during the Apocalypse and just now, that they could give him space for a while.

“Good,” Gabriel said, then gave them a crooked grin to deliberately lighten the mood. “If I _do_ fall off the wagon, though, I look forward to running into you boys again. We had some fun, didn’t we?”

“ _Fun_ isn’t exactly the word I would use,” Sam muttered.

He waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll be back. We can talk more later.”

They could, Dean realized. Even with the aching, empty, lonely feeling at the pit of his soul--and whether that was from watching Dad die _again,_ or the aftermath of linking with and then detaching from Nick and Jody and Gabriel, or breaking his bond with Amara, it didn’t matter. What mattered was they could deal with it later.

What mattered was, no matter how bleak it might look, they _had_ a ‘later’ to plan for.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, surprising himself with his own honesty. But, then again, him and Sam lying to each other hadn’t exactly ended well in the past. “But I’m getting there.”

He nodded, and the two of them lapsed into the most comfortable silence they’d shared in years.

_We can talk more later._

It was a beautiful, beautiful thought.

 


	37. Part 4, Chapter X

**X.**

 

When Jody woke, she felt like a wrung-out washcloth; drained and empty, cold and alone.

But, hey, on the plus side, she’d woken up. Which, despite all her attempts to reassure Nick (and herself), she hadn’t really been expecting to happen. So that was something.

She took in as deep a breath as she could, then very slowly and carefully opened her eyes. Those worked, too. Awesome. The room was featureless--one of the unused rooms in the boys’ secret hideout, probably; which meant they’d driven back from Gabriel’s place--but visible. Nick was curled up in a chair next to the bed, the back of his head towards her. He was asleep, and looked unusually peaceful.

She smiled at the sight, then took a deep breath and inched her way to a sitting position, propping herself up on her left arm, which was oddly stiff. Alarmed, she looked down at it.

It was intact. No obvious pieces of flesh missing, all her fingers were present, all her joints bent at all the right places. And it was covered in a delicate network of scars, like pictures she’d seen online of lightning burns.

She hissed at the extent of the damage, and carefully flexed her hand again. It didn’t _hurt,_ it just...it moved less than it used to.

“Welcome back,” a soft voice said from the doorway.

She jumped and turned to find Gabriel standing there. He looked as tired as she felt, but he was on his feet. And unscarred.

“How long’ve I been out?”

“Couple days,” he said. “Some of that was me, though. I wanted to keep you under until I’d fixed your burns as much as they’d go.”

She looked down at her hand again, and carefully flexed it as much as she could. “Thanks.”

“I couldn’t get it past scar tissue. Sorry. Limits to what even I can do, believe it or not.” It was a pale, shadowy attempt at his usual humor. _Maybe not so unscarred after all._

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, looking back up at him. “I mean it, thanks.”

He shrugged one shoulder.

“What about…” She swallowed a little. “Is everyone else okay? I don’t...I don’t really remember what happened.”

He hesitated. “I think...I don’t know for sure, because I’m not actually as much of a mind reader as I pretend to be, but I _think_ John thought you and Nick were gonna break before we got her trapped. What I know for sure happened was he tried to take on more of the energy than he could handle, and combusted.”

Jody’s eyes widened. “I didn’t...I didn’t feel _any_ of that.”

“While it happened? No. You were too wrapped up in what you were doing. The…” He paused a minute, as if searching for the right word. “The adrenaline, the...the ecstasy of handling that much pure Heavenly power took up every part of you that could feel. Humans can only handle so much sensory data, and the joy was enough to overwrite the pain, at least in the moment. But yeah, that’s where the burns came from. The combustion. Lucky Dean was able to step in and hold the node, or we would’ve lost Amara.”

She winced again. “How’s...how’s he holding up?”

“I haven’t really asked him about it,” Gabriel admitted. “Not that I’m really the person he’ll wanna talk to about this anyway, but…” He shrugged. “He’s holding together, at least on the surface, but I think he’s pretty messed up underneath.”

She nodded. _I’ll do what I can for him. And Sam. I’m pretty sure Castiel will, too._ “Right.” And then the rest of her brain caught up.

 _If_ I _got burned this bad by John exploding, then what about Sam? And Nick?_ She glanced over at Nick. He hadn’t moved, even when the Archangel came in, and usually he slept pretty lightly. “Is...what about the others? Sam, a-and Nick, are they...are they okay?”

“Sam’s fine,” Gabriel said. “Kind of banged up, but he was insulated from the burning part of the explosion. He just got tossed around a bit by the shockwave, broke a couple bones, but nothing I couldn’t clean up. Nick…” He looked over at him, and paused, clearly carefully considering how to explain. “Nick was facing John, when he went up. He didn’t get burned, not like you did; damaged as he is, he’s a powerful enough vessel that his body could hold up for the most part, but...human eyes aren’t really built to take in that kind of light. I couldn’t...I couldn’t heal him past scar tissue, just like with you. I’m sorry.”

Jody swallowed. She could hear pretty damn clearly what Gabriel wasn’t saying straight out. “Is he...is he okay? Is he hurting?”

“Not that he’s told me. Or anyone else, far as I know.”

Which didn’t mean that much. Nick didn’t pull any of that stoic he-man-feels-no-pain bullshit with _her,_ but there were very few people he trusted with how he was feeling, physically or otherwise. She sort of had the feeling no one here except her made that list. “Okay.”

“I wanna check you over one more time, okay?” Gabriel said. “Then I can wake him up and you two can talk. I’ve been helping him sleep--just little things, keeping the nightmares away.” He shrugged. “I felt like he could use a little peace.”

Jody nodded. _I think we all could._ “Thank you, for that. And...no, let him wake up on his own.” She could watch over him, the way he’d been watching over her, and she could call the girls, and…

And then they could go home, and work their way through all the new challenges that had rained down upon them. But they’d managed to become a pretty good team, over the years. They could weather this, like they’d weathered their other problems.

After all, they’d just saved the world together.

Gabriel’s power washed over her like a sunlit stream, and she reached out with her good hand to hold Nick’s. It felt warm in hers, right, like comfort and home and new beginnings. Whatever else they’d lost along the way, they still had each other, and their friends, and their victory.

For Jody, that was peace enough to make her whole.

 


	38. Spoilers and Notes

Spoiler characters:

 

John Winchester

 

Bela Talbot (as a demon)

 

Gabriel


End file.
